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Out-of-this-world proposal for solar wind power http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1285351143
Forget wind power or conventional solar power, the world's energy needs could be met 100 billion times over using a satellite to harness the solar wind and beam the energy to Earth - though focussing the beam could be tricky.
The concept for the so-called Dyson-Harrop satellite begins with a long metal wire loop pointed at the sun. This wire is charged to generate a cylindrical magnetic field that snags the electrons that make up half the solar wind. These electrons get funnelled into a metal spherical receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire's magnetic field - making the system self-sustaining.
Any current not needed for the magnetic field powers an infrared laser trained on satellite dishes back on Earth, designed to collect the energy. Air is transparent to infrared so Earth's atmosphere won't suck up energy from the beam before it reaches the ground.... A relatively small Dyson-Harrop satellite using a 1-centimetre-wide copper wire 300 metres long, a receiver 2 metres wide and a sail 10 metres in diameter, sitting at roughly the same distance from the sun as the Earth, could generate 1.7 megawatts of power - enough for about 1000 family homes in the US.... [Unfortunately, to] beam power from a Dyson-Harrop satellite to Earth, one "would require stupendously huge optics, such as a virtually perfect lens between maybe 10 to 100 kilometres across," he says.
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'Doc Michael says:
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Very cool, except for that impractical part.
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