XPost: sci.space.policy   
   From: fmccall@earthlink.net   
      
   "Jeff Findley"  wrote:   
      
   :I'd imagine that at a sufficiently large scale, SPS could help eliminate   
   :long distance electricity transmission lines.  Makes you wonder how much   
   :money you could save by eliminating them, both in terms of cost to build and   
   :maintain the lines and in terms of the energy you lose by sending   
   :electricity over hundreds of miles of wires.   
      
   I'd think you'd lose more in the energy translations from sunlight to   
   electricity to microwave to electricity that you'd lose in line   
   losses.   
      
   Seem to me that SPS makes more sense if you build one BIG rectenna   
   farm and then distribute the power from there just as we do now.   
   Dividing things up like you're talking about means you're constantly   
   futzing with the beam (to do load leveling that is now done in the   
   long distance grid), take more losses to side lobes (more and smaller   
   beams), and various other bad effects.   
      
   --   
   "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable   
    man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,   
    all progress depends on the unreasonable man."   
                                         --George Bernard Shaw   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)