Commercial space upswing to fuel PV prospects

China's commercial space industry, which has been booming on the back of recent milestones in reusable rockets and satellite constellations, is now driving rapid growth in the emerging space photovoltaics sector, according to experts.

Space photovoltaics, as a core supporting component of commercial spaceflight, is becoming the critical backbone for the long-term power supply of spacecraft, they said.

By leveraging the unique advantage of continuous sunlight in space — where geostationary orbits receive light 99 percent of the time — these systems achieve power generation efficiencies far surpassing those on Earth.

The sector has already seen strong market interest. Data from Wind Info, a financial information service provider, show that share prices of companies in the space PV sector rose by over 26 percent between early December 2025 and late January 2026, fueled by investor optimism about the commercial space era.

Wu Ziyi, an analyst with CITIC Securities, said that since spacecraft cannot plug into a ground grid and carrying fuel is prohibitively heavy, solar power has become the only efficient, long-term energy solution for satellites.

Wu explained that solar radiation intensity in space is more than 30 percent higher than on Earth. Furthermore, flexible, foldable solar arrays allow engineers to easily scale up the power supply to match the increasing computing demands of modern satellites.

"Driven by commercial space trends, various emerging technologies are accelerating their industrial application, making space PV a key area of development," said Yang Fu, a researcher at Caixin Securities.

Yang highlighted that demand is being driven by a massive increase in satellite quantity. Unlike the traditional era of limited launches, the commercial era is defined by "mega-constellations" — such as China's Qianfan network — which plan to deploy tens of thousands of satellites, creating a huge market for solar cells.

Yang also pointed out that the "quality" of demand is shifting. As satellites take on complex tasks like space-based computing and use advanced electric propulsion, their power consumption is skyrocketing. This is pushing the industry to look beyond traditional, expensive materials toward more cost-effective commercial solutions.

Zhu Yue, chief analyst at CITIC Construction Investment Securities, believes the technology will evolve in three stages. In the short term, traditional "gallium arsenide" batteries — which are highly efficient but very expensive to manufacture — will continue to dominate high-value missions like deep-space exploration.

However, for mass-produced commercial satellites, Zhu noted that newer technologies like HJT (heterojunction) batteries are preferred. These batteries offer a better balance of cost and performance, being lighter and highly resistant to the harsh radiation of space.

Looking further ahead, Zhu predicts that next-generation perovskite batteries will achieve breakthroughs in power-to-weight ratios. These advancements could eventually support futuristic infrastructure, such as space-based solar power stations by 2030 and massive space data centers after 2035.

renqi@chinadaily.com.cn