Meta secures up to 1GW space solar

Meta has signed a capacity agreement with Overview Energy for up to 1 gigawatt of space-based solar power for future data centers. (about.fb.com) (overviewenergy.com) Overview and Meta announced the deal on April 27. The companies said Overview plans an initial orbital demonstration in 2028 and expects commercial power delivery in 2030. (overviewenergy.com) (prnewswire.com) The basic idea is simple to describe and hard to build: collect sunlight in orbit, where there is no night or weather, then send that energy down to Earth. Overview said it plans to convert the power into near-infrared light and beam it to existing solar farms, which would turn that light back into electricity. (techcrunch.com) (pv-magazine-usa.com) Meta said the point is firm power for artificial intelligence infrastructure, not a science project. In its announcement, the company paired the Overview agreement with a separate storage deal meant to cover periods when renewable power is available but the grid cannot deliver it when needed. (about.fb.com) That second agreement came a week earlier. On April 21, Noon Energy and Meta said Meta reserved up to 1 gigawatt and 100 gigawatt-hours of ultra-long-duration storage, starting with a 25 megawatt, 2.5 gigawatt-hour project scheduled for completion by 2028. (noon.energy) (pv-magazine-usa.com) Meta’s energy team has been warning that data-center growth is running into power bottlenecks. Nat Sahlstrom, Meta’s vice president for energy and sustainability, said in the company post that advanced generation and storage are needed to support the next wave of artificial intelligence computing. (about.fb.com) Overview is still early. TechCrunch reported the Ashburn, Virginia, startup is four years old and emerged from stealth in December, which means Meta is buying future capacity from a company that still has to prove the system in orbit. (techcrunch.com) Reuters described the agreement as aimed at supplying Meta data centers by the end of the decade. That gives the company a long runway to test whether orbital solar can move from concept art and lab work into contracted electricity on the ground. (msn.com) For now, Meta has locked up an option on a new power source before it exists at scale. The schedule to watch is 2028 for the demo and 2030 for first commercial delivery. (overviewenergy.com)