Value chain

Power electronics and ground segment

Power handling on the satellite, the receiving antenna on the ground, conversion to grid power and the grid connection.

This area is studied in more depth than the rest of the value chain. It spans 5 layers, with 242 published records between them.

Where each layer stands

Power distribution: where it stands

As of 2026-10-01

Power distribution carries electricity from the solar cells to the transmitter. No tested hardware appears in these records: three describe one 1978 US design for a 5 GW satellite, and one a 2025 Chinese design. The 1978 design planned to carry power at 40 kV DC, but its own report said the 40 to 50 kV switchgear and cable insulation still needed development (CLM-0210). In that design, power distribution and control hardware was about 19.2 per cent of the 30.47 million kg dry mass (CLM-0212). A 12.186 MWh nickel-hydrogen battery would serve only the heaters of the klystrons, the microwave power tubes, during eclipse, when the Earth shades the satellite (CLM-0211). The Chinese 1 GW design uses a 5 kV main power bus. Its masses add up to its stated total, and its 12.3 per cent efficiency is a design target (CLM-0692).

Ground receiver: where it stands

As of 2026-10-01

The ground receiver has measured results, but only at small scale. It is a rectenna, a field of antennas that turns the beam back into DC electricity. By 1976 a rectenna had delivered 30 kW of DC over 1.6 km, converting over 82 per cent of the microwave power reaching it (CLM-1097). A 2022 US Navy laboratory array of about 4.45 m2 turned 73 per cent of 2,265 W into DC at about 1 km, in short pulses and with no stated uncertainty (CLM-1123, CLM-1125). Two NASA programmes in the 1980s aimed at frequencies above 2.45 GHz, and both ended with no working device (CLM-0940). A 2021 Frazer-Nash study summary calls the beam inherently safe because sunlight is more intense, but cites no exposure standard (CLM-0002). A 1980 DOE assessment said the risk from the added microwave exposure must be assessed before building (CLM-1007).

Getting the power into the grid

As of 2026-10-01

The grid rules a receiving station would have to meet are published, but no paper found in a research index deals in its title or abstract with whether a station's converters could meet them. A receiving station on the ground turns the beam into direct current. Converters must then turn it into alternating current that meets the grid code, the technical rules for connecting to the grid. In Great Britain those rules already exist for other power stations. A separate security standard limits how much generation a fault on a plant's own connection may remove at once to 1,800 MW (CLM-0780). The grid code also sets how the plant must handle reactive power, which flows back and forth without doing useful work, and voltage dips (CLM-1107, CLM-1108). A separate recommendation sets planning levels on the network for harmonics, unwanted extra frequencies (CLM-0787). No such paper was found (CLM-0799).

Grid integration and system value

As of 2026-10-01

Cost alone does not show what a power plant is worth to the grid. The International Energy Agency and the firm Lazard each say that plain levelised cost, the lifetime cost per unit of electricity, misses system value (CLM-0301, CLM-0303). Two 2025 studies model what a space plant would add to a future energy system (CLM-0286, CLM-1172). In one, a space plant would lower total system cost only at the more favourable of NASA's cost projections (CLM-0286). For Great Britain, the system operator states that at a system inertia of 102 GVA.s, a sudden loss of at least 2,000 MW of supply would pull grid frequency down to 48.8 Hz, where disconnecting customers begins. That threshold would change with the response services held (CLM-0795). Inertia is the energy stored in spinning machines that steadies grid frequency. That report does not discuss space solar power. An index count made for these records on 4 September 2026 found 2,551 papers on space solar power. None has a title or abstract that mentions grid codes, though many older papers in the index have no abstract (CLM-0799). A third 2025 study reports better voltage stability, but its orbiting mirrors light an ordinary solar farm in a nine-bus test network, with steady-state calculations only (CLM-0800).

Security, defence and resilience

As of 2026-10-01

The risks in these records include attack from the ground and a forged control signal. Secure World Foundation's 2026 open-source assessment judges it unlikely that China now has a working ground-launched anti-satellite missile that can reach geostationary orbit, the high orbit where a satellite stays over one point on Earth, though one is likely in development (CLM-0741). For a target there, the assessment estimates several hours of warning after a detected launch. No source held here shows whether a large structure could use that warning (CLM-0744). A 2019 assessment co-written with US defence-affiliated researchers judges that a solar power satellite could become more vulnerable as space becomes more contested, and suggests many smaller satellites in place of a few large ones (CLM-0230). The control link is the radio signal from the ground that points the power beam. A patent filed in 2017 for the CASSIOPeiA design discloses no check that this signal is genuine. Patents often leave out security measures, so this says little, and nothing about the current design (CLM-0899). An analysis of the published design, made for these records and not a test, finds that of the failures analysed, a forged signal is the only one that would steer the beam toward the forger (CLM-1478). Viasat, a satellite operator, says the February 2022 attack on its KA-SAT network came through a ground network (CLM-0757).

Layers in this area

The record count is every record tagged to that layer, not the number published. What the depth levels mean.