SRC-024

Space Based Solar Power as a Contributor to Net Zero - Phase 1: Engineering Feasibility Report

Published claims resting on this source

• CLM-0001 The UK government's own feasibility study describes a system beaming microwaves at about 230 watts per square metre onto the ground.
• CLM-0006 None of the five main studies mentions the international radio-frequency exposure limits, or any safety standard, or a restricted area around the receiving site.
• CLM-0007 The UK study's own experts expect the beam to interfere with electronics in its path, and think it unlikely to have much effect outside the receiving site.
• CLM-0235 A 2020 UK study rated the UK behind other countries in many technologies for a solar power satellite. For three key ones, large mirrors, space solar panels and power beaming, it named the UK's lack of manufacturing experience or capacity as the main barrier. It rated closing these three gaps by 2050 as medium to very high difficulty, depending on the technology.
• CLM-0714 The 2021 UK study by Frazer-Nash Consultancy proposed that the satellite fly itself to its final orbit, using its own solar panels to run its own electric thrusters. Chemical tugs would take the parts only partway, to about 5,900 km, just above the inner radiation belt, where the satellite would be built. The study said the plan needed further work and gave no figures for the self-powered trip.
• CLM-1436 A UK study says that one space solar power system would typically deliver about 2 gigawatts to the grid, and it compares this with the output of a nuclear power station.
• CLM-1441 Documents give the size of the CASSIOPeiA satellite design as anything from 1 to 2 km across. For a full-size version delivering 2 gigawatts from geostationary orbit, the best supported figure is about 1.7 km, from a 2021 study for the UK government. A 2020 report gives 1.6 km and credits the designer's 2019 paper, but that paper gives 1.6 km only as a general minimum for any such antenna at one radio frequency, not as this design's size. None of these is a measured size: the satellite has not been built.
• CLM-1452 By our rough arithmetic, the beam of the UK's full-size reference design would carry about a million times more power than the power-beaming tests checked here that have a stated power: a Chinese ground test in 2022 that sent about 2 kilowatts across 55 metres, and two figures of about a kilowatt reported in the press in 2026, one for a Japanese satellite that is planned and not shown to have flown (a Japanese space agency researcher's 2025 lecture shows the same plan) and one for another Chinese ground test. At the design's peak beam strength, such a test could cover less than ten square metres, against tens of square kilometres for the design, so none of these tests comes close to the full-size beam that the worry about disturbing the upper atmosphere concerns. No output power is stated in the documents held here for a third test, a US Air Force flight test that nothing held shows has launched.
• CLM-1472 The designer of the UK's CASSIOPeiA satellite says it has no moving parts and is built from many small identical pieces, so when pieces fail it loses power gradually rather than stopping. It is meant to run for 20 years or more with no planned repairs. A 2020 UK government study repeats this and treats the satellite's upkeep as a slow loss of power rather than a repair bill.
• CLM-1473 A 2020 UK government study expects early test satellites to be left to wear out slowly. For full-size satellites, it assumes robots would swap out faulty modules, using the same robots that built the satellite. Those robots do not exist yet. NASA's 2024 study instead plans to replace all of a satellite's hardware every 10 years.

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