The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a high energy glass laser system and target chamber that will be used for research in inertial confinement fusion. The 192 beams of the NIF laser system are pumped by over 8600 Xenon flashlamps. The power conditioning system for NIF must deliver nearly 300 MJ of energy to the flashlamps in a cost effective and reliable manner. The present system design has over 200 capacitive energy storage modules that store approximately 1.7 MJ each and deliver that energy through a single switch assembly to 20 parallel sets of two series flashlamps. Although these are many possible system designs, few will meet the aggressive cost goals necessary to make the system affordable. Sandia National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are developing the system and component technologies that will be required to build the power conditioning system for the National Ignition Facility. This paper will describe the ongoing development activities for the NIF power conditioning system.© (1997) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.