WOULD THIS WORK? Concentrated Solar Power 12 Miles Above The Earth

The plants can be placed nearly loads, reducing transmission cost and losses. The solar flux models indicate this approach will work as far north as Stockholm, because of the greater solar intensity at that height. They occupy very little ground space compared to ordinary solar. The design calls for the collector surface to be pointed at the sun, so there is no cosine loss, a loss that affects ground-based solar power.

A quick and dirty metric for base-load power is to take the income for ten years times the revenue per kWh to be the allowable capital investment per kW of capacity. One cent per kWh would allow $800/kW and two cents would allow $1600/kW or $1.6 billion per GW.