

The only two metrics that matter here are W/m^2 and weight.
You can’t make a reasonable microwave receiver lighter than solar film and efficiency peaks around 50% in FIXED installations and you can easily assume less than a quarter (under 10%) when the target isn’t just moving, but is also changing angles and distance (you’d have to put the receiver on a gimbal like for cameras) and now it’s also interfering with flight (propeller airflow, unless you do weird propeller geometries or tilted body flight
Tldr DUMB
Microwave power transfer only make sense between distant fixed line of sight locations with minimal infrastructure available. On earth that’s literally just island mountain tops. Even then it’s easier and cheaper to still just install solar
On the moon, it would basically just mean you have one big generator and everything gets powered by the sun when in sunlight and switch to microwave from the generator when in shadow, which is pretty much the only configuration that even make sense




Has already been done
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/solar-powered-drone-design-2025/