Meta has signed an agreement with four-year-old startup Overview Energy to supply up to one gigawatt of electricity, which satellites will collect in orbit and transmit to ground solar stations in the form of infrared light - including at night. If the technology works on an industrial scale, it can change the approach to powering data centers, which consume more and more electricity due to the growing workload of artificial intelligence systems. Meta has committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable sources, betting primarily on industrial solar power plants.
Overview Energy technology involves the conversion of sunlight in orbit into the infrared spectrum, with further direction to industrial solar farms with a capacity of hundreds of megawatts. Farms, in turn, will convert this light into electricity. The general director of the company, Mark Berte, emphasizes the security of the system: the wide format of energy transfer eliminates any threat, characteristic of microwave or laser transmitters.
The first satellite is planned to be launched into low Earth orbit in January 2028 year - to test the technology in real conditions. A large-scale deployment will pre-launch at 2030 year: a fleet of a thousand devices in geostationary orbit - at altitude, where each satellite "hangs" motionless over one point on Earth. За розрахунками Берте, ця мережа покриватиме близько третини планети – від Тихоокеанського узбережжя США до Західної Європи, – і кожен апарат прослужить понад десять років.
Source: https://techcrunch.com