Wireless Power Transmission: 5 Ways Beaming Electricity Could Transform the UK’s Grid

The revolution that wireless technology brought communications – freedom from wires, cables, and fixed connections – is coming to electricity. We’ve all seen what that shift made possible for how we connect, communicate, and share information. As energy demand accelerates, wireless power transmission offers the same kind of transformative potential for how we power the world.

UK electricity demand is set to double by 2050. Meeting that demand – while also transitioning the grid to green generation – will require up to four times today’s renewable capacity.

The grid must expand, and fast. While progress is being made, the bottlenecks are real: planning delays, infrastructure costs, and the challenge of connecting generation to demand across a complex network.

That’s why we’re partnering with National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) to investigate whether wireless power transmission (WPT) – beaming electricity using focused Radio Frequency (RF) waves – can help address some of these challenges. 

How it works

Unlike the inductive charging in a phone or electric toothbrush – which works over centimetres – the WPT technology we’re developing operates over much greater distances. A transmitter antenna array converts electricity into a focused beam of Radio Frequency waves at 5.8GHz, the microwave sub-set of RF similar to Wi-Fi – a frequency chosen to minimise atmospheric absorption and maximise transfer efficiency. That energy is transmitted precisely in a collimated beam to a receiving antenna, where simple rectifiers convert the microwave energy back into DC electricity. An inverter then converts it to AC power, for connection with the grid. It is designed to be safe, with an interlock system ensuring no animal, bird, or other object interacts with the beam if crossing its path.

This approach is the same fundamental technology underlying Space Solar’s work on space-based solar power (SBSP) – applied here to one of the most pressing near-term challenges in the UK’s energy system.

Here are five reasons why it matters.

1. Cutting years off grid connection times

The queue to connect new renewable energy projects to the UK grid stretches for years. It’s one of the most significant barriers to the energy transition. 

WPT can be deployed more quickly than wired connections such as overhead lines or underground cables. That can mean faster connections, even if on a temporary basis, for wind farms, solar projects, battery storage, and EV charging infrastructure. And it opens the door to temporary and flexible connections – for construction sites, large events, or emergency deployment – without the need for permanent civil works.  There is a trade-off in efficiency of transmission versus cables but there are compelling cases if connection times are significantly reduced.

This will accelerate progress towards the UK’s 2030 clean electricity target, whilst easing the strain on local networks caused by the rapid electrification of transport, heating, and industry.

2. Keeping the lights on when it matters most

Severe weather is one of the biggest threats to network resilience. When storms bring down overhead lines, restoring power can take days – and in remote or rural areas, even longer. The physical nature of conventional infrastructure is its vulnerability.

WPT systems use focused beams directed between elevated antennas. They can be rapidly deployed after a disruption, bypassing damaged sections of the network entirely. This isn’t just a marginal improvement in response times – it’s a completely different approach to emergency power and one that doesn’t rely on the very infrastructure that has been compromised.

3. Protecting the places people value most

New transmission infrastructure – pylons, overhead lines, cable trenches – regularly faces community opposition and planning delays, particularly in protected landscapes. These constraints mean that critical energy infrastructure takes years longer to build, and costs far more.

WPT, on the other hand, requires only antenna structures, creating a lower visual impact than conventional alternatives. Long-range wireless transmission could route power through sensitive landscapes with minimal disruption – protecting the beauty of Britain’s countryside, while still connecting the communities and generators within it.

4. Taking costs out of the system – and off bills

The UK already has some of the highest energy costs in the world. A major – and largely invisible – contributor is the system of constraint payments: compensation paid to generators to curtail their output when local grid capacity can’t absorb it. These costs flow directly through to consumer bills.

WPT can relieve network capacity constraints faster and more cheaply than conventional reinforcement, allowing constraint payments to fall, and consumer energy bills to lower.

5. Reaching the places conventional infrastructure can’t

The UK has extraordinary renewable energy resources – but some of the best of them are in places that are hardest to connect. The cost and complexity of conventional grid extension to these areas – from offshore wind farms to island communities and remote highland locations – is a genuine challenge for clean energy access.

WPT meets that challenge head-on. Coastal and shorter sea crossings that would be expensive for cable installations could utilise WPT links. Remote on-shore communities that currently rely on diesel generation could be connected cleanly and efficiently. 

The same core technology underpinning this project – microwave power beaming – is at the heart of Space Solar’s broader mission to transmit clean energy from space to anywhere on Earth.

What’s next?

Just as wireless technology reshaped communications, advances in WPT have real potential to support the UK’s growing electricity infrastructure needs – and to do so at the pace the energy transition demands. The Wireless Power Transmission project with NGED is building the technical, commercial base to make that case, grounded in real network challenges.

The direction of travel is clear. The question this project is designed to answer is not whether WPT could play a role in the UK’s energy future – but how significant that role could be, and how quickly we can get there.