LEO Based Systems Generally, a SPS operating in low earth orbit (LEO) suffers from eclipse times occurring regularly due to the Earth's shadow. Furthermore, due to the fact that for a continuous operation either a eclipse storage and several receiving stations on Earth are required or a large energy storage is necessary which stores the collected energy when no receiving station is within the horizon of the SPS. The study showed that a LEO based SPS needs in the order of tens times longer to recover the energy which was needed to make it operational. The solar dynamic options is, compared to the photovoltaic, relatively better in LEO due to the fact that energy can be stored more efficiently with latent heat storage systems [10], For these reasons LEO based systems are only of relevance for smaller demonstration SPS. Figure 12 shows the energetic amortization times for a 500 Mg demonstrator and a 100 MW prototype SPS, operating in a 500 km orbit and using microwave transmission.
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