Overview’s satellites will continuously collect sunlight in geosynchronous orbit and send it as near-infrared light to existing ground-based solar installations that convert it into electricity. This approach expands solar farm productivity overnight without new land, new grid connections, or new on-site infrastructure.
Meta signed a contract with View Energyspace solar startup to provide up to 1 gigawatt of power from satellites collecting solar energy in orbit and send it back to Earth as near-infrared light.
The initial orbital demonstration is planned for January 2028; Commercial supply of electricity is expected in 2030. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The deal is the first commercial capacity reservation for space-based solar power by any company and marks the highest-profile approval of a technology that has long occupied the speculative engineering field.
The key problem the agreement addresses is the most pressing operational constraint on AI infrastructure: data centers need electricity around the clock, but most renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, are intermittent in nature.
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Meta data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 alone, which is roughly equivalent to powering 1.7 million American homes for a year. As the company expands its AI computing footprint, including the Hyperion data center campus in Louisiana and the Prometheus campus in Ohio, the latter of which is powered by nuclear power, its overall energy needs will increase significantly.
The company’s goal is to reach 30 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity. The problem is that despite companies’ commitment to renewable energy, solar farms stop producing at night and wind farms are weather-dependent.
Battery storage at data center scale is expensive and space intensive. Nuclear power solves the problem of intermittency, but requires years of regulatory approval and construction. The cosmic sun is the third way.
The review’s design differs significantly from previous space solar concepts, which proposed using lasers or microwaves to transfer energy from space to a central receiving station.
These approaches face significant technical, safety, and regulatory hurdles: microwave beams require large directional rectenna arrays, and high-intensity laser transmission raises aviation and safety issues. He
verview instead uses a broad, low-intensity near-infrared beam that is invisible to the naked eye and safe to view from a direct satellite aimed at an existing utility-scale solar farm, not a new receiving station, according to CEO Marc Berte.
The existing photovoltaic infrastructure of that farm converts near-infrared light into electricity just as it converts sunlight. The beam effectively extends the solar farm’s generation hours into the evening and night without requiring any new land, new grid connections or new ground infrastructure.
Satellites will operate in geosynchronous orbit, remaining fixed relative to a certain point on the Earth’s surface.
Overview was founded in 2022 and is located in Ashburn, Virginia, in the busy corridor of Northern Virginia’s data center, which hosts a large portion of the world’s Internet infrastructure.
The company came out of stealth in December 2025. He has already demonstrated the transmission of power beams from a moving aerial platform to the ground, a precursor to the space-based transmitter he is developing.
A satellite LEO demonstration planned for January 2028 will be the first test of power transfer from orbit. The advisory board includes Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator and former Congressman; Mike Griffin, former NASA Administrator; and Joseph Kelliher, former Chairman of FERC and Executive Vice President of Regulation at NextEra Energy.
The three consultants cover both space and energy regulatory areas, so Vision technology must move simultaneously.
Meta’s Vice President of Energy and Sustainability Nat Sahlstrom described the deal as a strategic hedge: “Space solar technology is a transformative step forward by using existing ground infrastructure to deliver new, uninterrupted energy from orbit. We are excited to help bring this new energy technology to market.”
Warnings are important. The 2030 commercial delivery date is eight years from the creation of the Overview in the space solar energy sector, which has generated ambitious concepts but no commercial systems anywhere in the world.
The technical challenges of building, launching, and maintaining a geosynchronous satellite capable of continuous high-energy power transmission on a commercial scale remain unresolved.
The deal gives Meta early access to capabilities from the Overview system; does not guarantee that the system will be available as planned, and financial terms are not disclosed.
The review introduced ‘megawatt-photons’, a new unit of measure to describe the light power required to generate one megawatt of electricity, reflecting how different the framework is from a standard power purchase agreement.
For Meta, the cost of signing a capacity reservation agreement with a pre-commercial startup pales in comparison to the potential benefit of securing 1 gigawatt of renewable energy for its data center estate by 2030.
If the review succeeds, Meta has secured a strategic advantage. Failure to review, Meta forfeited the costs of signing the contract.
