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Stratosolar provides energy security for all countries
Stratospheric Solar energy is local and abundant for all countries: no imports necessary
Clouds and weather do not interrupt power generation, fossil fuel backup is not needed
Gravity energy storage provides affordable night-time electricity
Power plants can be near urban areas where electricity demand is concentrated
PV Electricity is low cost, reliable and scales to meet all demand
PV panel manufacturing technology is available to all
Silicon raw material is abundant and available to all
Energy return on energy in (EROI) exceeds a factor of 100
This table compares solar insolation and utilization or capacity factor for ground PV and StratoSolar at 20km altitude for major urban areas from latitude 19 to latitude 60. This does not count the additional benefits of StratoSolar: it needs no backup or long distance transmission and includes energy storage. In volume production at large scale all StratoSolar power plants will use 1 axis tracking which increases power plant utilization or capacity factor to a global average exceeding 50%, and is particularly beneficial at far northern geographies.
Why energy security matters
While the primary benefit of clean energy is atmospheric CO2 reduction to mitigate climate change, a second major benefit is improving energy security. Energy security is a political benefit. Fossil fuels are not uniformly distributed and most major world economies rely on substantial fossil fuel imports which makes them vulnerable to disruption of energy supplies, particularly oil. When countries are self sufficient in energy they can not be threatened by disruptions in fossil fuel supply.
From the end of world war two to today, the post war "pax americana" has guaranteed stable access to fossil fuels for the OECD economies which encompass the US, Europe, Japan, Korea and other western countries, most of which are substantial fossil fuel importers. With the growth of China, India and other emerging economies the balance started to shift. China is now the world's biggest oil importer and India is growing rapidly.
The energy world is starting to look like that of pre WW2 where there were competing powers in Europe, Japan and the US. Access to oil was used as a political weapon and many believe this was a major contributor to the outbreak of WW2. This was very clear in the case of Japan, but Germany's lack of oil contributed to its attack on the USSR.
Because energy security has not been a major issue for over seventy years, complacency has set in. The shift to a world where the pax americana is not the guarantee it once was not yet been widely appreciated. Trump's antics have exacerbated an already existing trend. In the world of competing global powers that is emerging, oil is likely to become an instrument of that competition, as it was pre WW2.
Clean energy like wind and solar are local and as such do not have the political energy security problems of fossil fuels. There is a growing assertion that wind and solar can be 100% replacements for fossil fuels and that we are on a path toward that future. Unfortunately this assertion is ill founded, though gaining political acceptance. There is no technically feasible or cost effective path as yet to 100% replacement of fossil fuels. Also the rate of growth in clean energy though it seems impressive is far too slow to have a significant impact before the end of this century.
Stratosolar in contrast is a viable 100% fossil fuel replacement and its favourable economics mean it could be deployed rapidly. It is a viable solution to energy security, especially for China and India whose ever growing hunger for imported oil in particular will increasingly constrain economic growth.
Economies that are dependent on fossil fuel imports have yet to focus on their vulnerability. As usual, it will probably take a crisis that threatens or reduces fossil fuel imports to cause change. Hopefully that crises will not be armed conflict as it was with WW2.
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