Europe's Industry Base for Space Solar Power
Which European companies and research groups could build a space solar plant, and what have they done so far?
Chapter summary
Europe has most of the pieces but none of the scale.
Key takeaways
- 1
Its large prime contractors build geostationary telecommunications satellites with power systems of 20 kW or more, phased-array antennas and deployable structures, which are the nearest existing products to space solar modules.
- 2
Its research centres have run wireless power experiments on the ground, including the 2022 demonstration in Munich in which a microwave beam was transmitted across a test range and converted back into electricity to light a model city.
- 3
Consultancies under ESA contracts have produced the cost-benefit and technology studies behind SOLARIS (Chapter 12).
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