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

The contention to unafraid energy for AI models has reached caller heights: Meta has signed an statement with the startup Overview Energy that could spot a 1000 satellites beam infrared airy to star farms that powerfulness information centers astatine night.

In 2024, Meta’s information centers utilized much than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity—roughly capable to powerfulness much than 1.7 cardinal American homes for a year—and its request for compute powerfulness is lone increasing. The institution has committed to gathering 30 gigawatts of renewable powerfulness sources, with a absorption connected industrial-scale star powerfulness plants.

Typically, information centers turning to star powerfulness indispensable either put successful artillery retention oregon trust connected different procreation sources to run astatine night.

Overview, a four-year-old, Ashburn, Virginia, outfit that emerged from stealth successful December, has a antithetic solution: The institution is processing spacecraft that cod plentiful star powerfulness successful space. It past plans to person that vigor to near-infrared airy and beam it astatine sufficiently ample star farms—on the bid of hundreds of megawatts—which tin person that airy to electricity.

By utilizing a wide, infrared beam to powerfulness existing terrestrial star infrastructure, Overview thinks it tin sidestep the technological challenges and information and regulatory issues that bedevil plans to transmit powerfulness to Earth done high-power lasers oregon microwave beams. CEO Marc Berte says you’ll beryllium capable to look close into his satellite’s beam with nary sick effects.

The exertion would summation the instrumentality connected concern from gathering star farms and trim reliance connected fossil fuels — if it tin beryllium deployed astatine scale.

Overview says it has already demonstrated powerfulness transmission to the crushed from an aircraft, and is readying to motorboat a outer to debased Earth orbit successful January 2028 to execute its archetypal powerfulness transmission from space.

In today’s announcement, Meta said it signed the archetypal capableness preservation statement with Overview to person up to 1 gigawatt of powerfulness from the company’s spacecraft, though it’s not wide if immoderate wealth changed hands. Overview developed a caller metric for this contract, megawatt photons, which is the magnitude of airy required to make a megawatt of electricity.

Berte expects to statesman launching the satellites that would fulfill that committedness successful 2030, with a extremity of flying 1,000 spacecraft successful geosynchronous orbit, a precocious orbit successful which each outer remains fixed supra the aforesaid constituent connected Earth. He expects each of the company’s spacecraft to supply powerfulness from abstraction for much than 10 years.

Once successful space, Berte says the fleet of spacecraft volition beryllium capable to screen astir a 3rd of the planet, with an archetypal deployment that volition scope from the West Coast of the United States crossed to Western Europe. As the Earth rotates beneath and lawsuit star farms participate evening and night, Overview’s spacecraft should boost their electrical procreation with further airy from space.

Berte sees accidental successful combining some procreation and transmission, with the flexibility to present powerfulness to star farms wherever and whenever it is astir valuable.

“There’s a large quality betwixt being successful immoderate 1 vigor market, and being successful each of the vigor markets,” Berte told TechCrunch.