Phys.Org:Startup has plans for power plants in sky with drones
Short description. The plan is to fly unmanned drones at around 50,000 feet (15 km) to harvest wind and solar energy. Each drone would generate 50 kW of energy more than it would use to keep airborne. The energy would be wirelessly transmitted to the ground. Exactly what that means isn't clear to me.

This one sound like pie in the sky. (OK, that's enough puns). The big problem as I see it would be to keep the beams from the drones centered on the receivers. If the beam is narrow enough 50 kW is enough to cause some serious heating if it went off track. If it uses RF keeping the beam width down is also a problem. With a 1/2 degree beam width the 3 dB beam width would be about 800 feet. A laser might be a better choice, but a 100 kW laser might be kind of unhandy. I chose 100 kW so there would be a safety factor. Anyway I feel there are a number of concerns with getting this system off the ground. (OK, I didn't even see that one coming.)

If they can make it work it could be a very attractive energy source.

Bill Gill


C is not the speed of light in a vacuum.
C is the universal speed limit.