Look at the efficiency numbers on contact free charging pads. "Beaming" fails for power transmission immediately; it needs other factors to justify the efficiency hit; and once you're out of near field its much much worse.
Solar panels are quite useful, and they are essentially just beamed power receivers. And if you focus the beam instead of just using a glowing ball of hydrogen, go with a more efficient wavelength and remove all the atmospheric losses, it actually becomes quite efficient.
> Solar panels are quite useful, and they are essentially just beamed power receivers
Yes, but they are because their power source is unbelievably large and free. If you look at their efficiency from the perspective of what the sun puts out, they're laughable.
Problem is, with the moon beams we don't have infinite and free source power to waste on inefficiency.
> And if you focus the beam instead of just using a glowing ball of hydrogen, go with a more efficient wavelength and remove all the atmospheric losses, it actually becomes quite efficient.
Focusing the beam is not that easy, you need to hit a moving spot of minimal size with an extremely powerful laser. Avoiding all atmospheric losses is probably not going to work, either. Lastly, you need to get those transmitters built on earth, which, as the OP points out, quite land intensive.
It is a theoretical option, but I would not call it efficient.
> Yes, but they are because their power source is unbelievably large and free
Power sources on earth are also plentiful and almost free, compared to building stuff on the moon (at least until we have a lot more infrastructure up there)
