Meta inks deal for solar power at night, beamed from space

Meta has signed an agreement with startup Overview Energy to beam solar power from space to its data centers at night, marking a novel APProach to meeting surging AI energy demands.

In 2024, Meta's data centers consumed over 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity—enough to power more than 1.7 million American homes annually—and its computing needs continue to grow. The company has pledged to build 30 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, with a focus on utility-scale solar plants. Typically, solar-powered Data Centers require battery stoRAGe or alternative generation sources for nighttime Operation.

Overview Energy, a four-year-old startup based in Ashburn, Virginia, emerged from stealth mode in December with a different solution. The company is developing spacecraft that harvest solar energy in space, convert it into near-infrared light, and beam it to large solar fArms—on the scale of hundreds of megawatts—which then convert that light into electricity. By using a wide infrared beam compatible with existing terrestrial solar infrastructure, Overview aims to avoid the technological, safety, and regulatory hurdles that have hindered proposals relying on high-power lasers or microwave transmission. CEO Marc Berte says the beam is safe to view directly with no harmful effects.

The Technology promises to improve the return on Investment for solar farms and reduce fossil fuel dependence—if deployed at scale. Overview reports it has already dEMOnstrated ground-based power transmission from an aircraft and plans to launch a satellite to low Earth orbit in January 2028 for its first space-to-ground power test.

Under the agreement announced today, Meta has signed the first capacity reservation deal with Overview to receive up to 1 gigawatt of power from the company's spacecraft, though financial details were not disclosed. For this contrACT, Overview introduced a new metric: megawatt photons, DeFined as the amount of light required to generate one megawatt of electricity.

Berte expects to begin launching the satellites to fulfill this commitment in 2030, with a target of operating 1,000 spacecraft in geoSynchronous orbit, where each satellite remains fixed above a specific point on Earth. Each spacecraft is designed to deliver power from space for more than a decade.

Once deployed, the satellite fleet will be able to cover roughly one-third of the planet, with initial coverage stretching from the U.S. West Coast to Western Europe. As the Earth rotates and customer solar farms enter evening and nighttime hours, Overview's spacecraft will supplement their ouTPUt with additional light from space. Berte sees advantages in combining generation and transmission, offering the flexibility to deliver power to solar farms wherever and whenever it is most valuable.

"There's a big difference between being in any one energy market, and being in all of the energy markets," Berte said.