Meta inks run on solar energy at night, glowing in space

The race to protect electricity from AI models has reached new heights: Meta has signed a deal with startup Overview Energy that could see a thousand satellites shining infrared light on solar farms that power electricity at night.

By 2024, Meta’s data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity—enough to power more than 1.7 million American homes for an entire year—and their demand for computing power is increasing. The company is committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable energy sources, focusing on solar power plants.

Typically, data centers that turn to solar power must invest in battery storage or rely on other generation sources to operate at night.

Overview, a four-year-old Ashburn, Virginia-based outfit that debuted in December, has a different solution: The company is developing spacecraft that collect large amounts of solar energy from space. Then it plans to convert that energy into near-infrared light and shine it on solar farms large enough—in the form of hundreds of megawatts—that can convert that light into electricity.

By using an infrared beam to power the existing solar infrastructure on Earth, Overview thinks it can avoid the technical challenges and issues of safety and control that bedevil plans to transmit energy to Earth with high-powered lasers or microwave beams. CEO Marc Berte says he will be able to stare at the roof of his satellite without any ill effects.

The technology will increase the return on investment from building solar farms and reduce reliance on fossil fuels – if it can be deployed at scale.

Overview says it has already demonstrated power transfer from an aircraft, and plans to launch a satellite into low Earth orbit in January 2028 to make its first power transfer from space.

In today’s announcement, Meta said it has signed an initial capacity reservation agreement with Overview for up to 1 gigawatt of capacity in the company’s space, although it is unclear whether any money has changed hands. Overview has established a new metric for this contract, megawatt photons, which is the amount of light required to produce a megawatt of electricity.

Berte expects to begin launching satellites to fulfill that commitment by 2030, with the goal of flying 1,000 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, a high orbit in which each satellite remains fixed above the same point on Earth. He expects each of the company’s spacecraft to provide energy from space for more than 10 years.

Once in space, Berte says the fleet will be able to cover a third of the planet, with the first deployment going from the West Coast of the United States through Western Europe. As Earth orbits below and customers’ solar farms go into the evening and night, the Overview spacecraft must improve its power generation with more light from space.

Berte sees the opportunity to integrate both generation and transmission, and the flexibility to deliver power to solar farms wherever and whenever it matters most.

“There’s a big difference between being in any energy market, and being in all energy markets,” Berte told TechCrunch.