Quote Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy View Post
1: Who said anything about power for the earth?? remember I was talking about powering one piece of equipment
Then you don't even need the collector. Just attach solar panels to the equipment in question.

2: the collectors merely harvest energy there are a number of ways that could later be used to power equipment.
Not feasible. You are now talking about putting giant batteries in space. Battery technology is woefully lacking as well, otherwise a lot of issues regarding power consumption would not exist today. Plus they would be very heavy and cost a ton to ship up there along with the solar panels.

3: low earth orbit is hardly where we would place such equipment now is it
Then you have higher transportation cost and the efficiency of transporting such energy through a beam would go down, because the inverse square law will apply.