Meta signs deal for space-based solar power to fuel data centers

Meta has signed an agreement with the startup Overview Energy that could see a thousand satellites beam infrared light to solar farms that power data centers at night. In 2024, Meta's data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, roughly enough to power more than 1.7 million American homes for a year. The company has committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable power sources, with a focus on industrial-scale solar power plants. Overview, a four-year-old company based in Ashburn, Virginia, that emerged from stealth in December, is developing spacecraft that collect solar power in space. The company plans to convert that energy to near-infrared light and beam it at solar farms on the order of hundreds of megawatts, which can convert that light to electricity. By using a wide, infrared beam to power existing terrestrial solar infrastructure, Overview aims to sidestep the technological challenges and safety and regulatory issues that face plans to transmit power to Earth through high-power lasers or microwave beams. Chief Executive Marc Berte says you will be able to stare right into the satellite's beam with no ill effects. Overview says it has already demonstrated power transmission to the ground from an aircraft, and is planning to launch a satellite to low Earth orbit in January 2028 to perform its first power transmission from space. Meta said it signed the first capacity reservation agreement with Overview to receive up to 1 gigawatt of power from the company's spacecraft. Overview developed a new metric for this contract, megawatt photons, which is the amount of light required to generate a megawatt of electricity. Berte expects to begin launching the satellites that would fulfill that commitment in 2030, with a goal of flying 1,000 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit. He expects each spacecraft to provide power from space for more than 10 years. The fleet will be able to cover about a third of the planet, with an initial deployment reaching from the West Coast of the United States across to Western Europe.