Consider http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/SPS_Alpha_2012_Mankins.pdf

A lot of people are interested in seeing how the sunlight gets to the power producing system.  I think I know how to do it quite simply using ray tracing on models of the different configurations.  I think it can be done by setting the lighting properties of the materials.

-- place exactly one light in the scene to simulate the sun. This must be moved around to simulate ALPHA rotating to keep the microwaves going to Earth.  Doing a handful of representative locations is probably good enough.
-- Make the mirrors 100% specularly reflective
-- Make the solar cells 100% diffusive
-- Make everything else slightly emissive so you can see it.
-- Adjust the mirrors 'appropriately'.  This is the hard part.  Might start interactively moving them.

Then look straight down the nadir (towards Earth) vector from in-between the mirrors and the solar cells.  You should see a pattern of light on the solar cells indicating how much power is getting to each part of the solar arrays.  Ideally, you could get a quantitative reading of the amount of light falling on the solar cells.

One enhancement: put a plane below and larger than the solar arrays and have it be 100% diffusive as well.  This will show you how much solar power misses the solar cells entirely.

One might be able to use Maya or PovRay to do this.