PG&E wants to heat our world from the sky

No, I'm wearing my tinfoil hat (yet).  PG&E wants to work with a company that will put satellites in orbit to beam down energy collected from the Sun.  Good idea?  Well, let's think about the theory, the practice and the alternatives.

Theory: Energy from the Sun is free and clean, beaming it to Earth is do-able if not now, in the future.  It's better than fossil fuel.  Only if you ignore future population growth, economic growth and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  See my previous blog post on this date on this topic.

Practice: Can we really generate beams of energy that can penetrate the atmosphere and clouds but are low power enough to not bring down birds and airplanes?  Even if we achieve spectacular results, there will be energy lost in the process, how good can it be?

Alternatives: First, it's got to be more cost effective to use solar concentrators and PVs from the ground.  The fact that this stuff works at night is a Red Herring, since I'm quite sure we can find other ways of storing extra daytime solar power with the money not spent on a sky-based power generation system.  Second, what about other forms of PVs, wind and wave/tidal power?  Launching satellites is not without risk, the research and time required to get this right means not working on other, easier to manage and execute projects.

Alternatives are less risk, the technological advances are steep and, ultimately, the impact on global warming will be negative (increase warming).  Why do it?