Beamed Power

Let me put it this way. The coal burning power plant, where my father
works, produces power at a cost of about 2p (3UScents) per kw hour, on
average. The daytime rate, in the UK, is about 14USc/Kw-hr. Thats quite a
big increase and the only thing in-between those two values is utility
profit and transmission costs.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Thanks, that is interesting.

>>>Not gonna happen.
The minimum size for a useful rectenna is about 10 kilometres diameter.>>>

Wow!! Thats pushing 20,000 acres! Do any of the SPS concepts consider the
use of MASER's (microwave lasers) as power transmission devices? I can see

The transmission technology used makes no difference. It is a matter of geometry and the Rayleigh criterion.

The smaller the target, the bigger the transmitter must be. The bigger the target, the smaller the transmitter needs to be.

Masers are diffraction limited in the same way as any other transmitter.

The cost of antennas in space is a lot more expensive than rectennas on the ground. So we want the space segment antenna to be as small and light as possible,
the trade off is that the ground antennas must be correspondigly larger, according to the Rayleigh equation.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
that the cost of setting up just one rectena is not likely to be trivial.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Indeed, but it is a lot cheaper than the space segement portion.

And the cost of the competing power systems is also non-trivial.

We are talking real money here :-)

Cheers,

CR.