To answer the question in the title of this article: no, never. Space based solar will never, ever, be a solution to, well, anything. Why? Well it's very simple really. Follow along: A solar panel placed on the Earth will produce total energy Ea over lifetime Te, a value of Me The same solar panel placed in orbit will produce energy Es over lifetime Ts, a value of Ms It will cost Sa to "ship" the panel on Earth, and Ss to space. Maury's Razor: Ms-Me << Ss - Se. You are ALWAYS better off putting the panels in Earth. Example: A typical solar panel placed in the Nevada desert will produce about 350 kWh a year, and have a lifetime of about 25 years. At 10 cents for a kWh, that's about $875. The same panel in space will produce 5 times as much power in a year, but have a greatly shorter lifetime of about 12 years, and lose about 1/2 of the power in transmission. So it's lifetime value is $1,050 Shipping a panel to Nevada is about $1 a pound. Shipping to space is about $11,000 a pound. So as you can see $1050 - $ 875 << $11,000 - $1 I have played with these numbers every way you can imagine, it never works out for SPS. Period. No change in technology changes this, either. The ONLY thing that would make it work is if launch costs fall to about $10 a pound. That's less than air freight. Good luck.