Meta has signed an agreement with the startup Overview Energy to supply up to one gigawatt of electricity, which satellites will collect in orbit and transmit to ground-based solar stations in the form of infrared light—including at night. If the technology proves successful on an industrial scale, it could revolutionize the way data centers are powered, as they consume increasing amounts of electricity due to the growing load placed on artificial intelligence systems.
Consumption volume
Meta’s data centers consumed more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024. The company has committed to expanding its renewable energy capacity by 30 gigawatts, focusing primarily on utility-scale solar power plants.
The problem with traditional solar power is well known: once the sun goes down, it stops working, which means you need either batteries or backup power sources.
How this is supposed to work
Overview Energy—a four-year-old startup based in Ashburn, Virginia—offers a different solution. The company is developing devices that will collect solar energy in orbit, convert it into infrared radiation, and direct it in a wide beam toward existing ground-based solar farms with a capacity of several hundred megawatts. These, in turn, will convert that light into electricity.
The company’s CEO, Marc Berte, emphasizes that the beam was deliberately designed to be wide and safe: unlike lasers or microwave transmitters, it poses no threat to humans.
From plane to orbit
The startup has already demonstrated the transmission of energy to the ground from an aircraft. The first satellite is scheduled to be launched into low Earth orbit in January 2028 to test the technology under real-world conditions. If everything goes according to plan, large-scale deployment will begin in 2030: a fleet of a thousand satellites in geostationary orbit—at an altitude where each satellite remains stationary above a single point on Earth.
According to Berte’s calculations, this network will cover about a third of the planet—from the U.S. Pacific Coast to Western Europe—and each device will last more than ten years.
Agreement without guarantees
The signed agreement is a capacity reservation, not a contract with guaranteed payment: Meta has secured the right to receive up to one gigawatt from the Overview satellites, though the financial details have not been disclosed.
For this agreement, the startup even introduced a new unit of measurement—“the megawatt photon”—which refers to the amount of light needed to generate one megawatt of electricity. Whether this agreement will be the first step toward a viable space energy sector will be revealed by the launch in 2028.
According to techcrunch.com
