Meta Signs 1GW Space Solar Deal As China Achieves Breakthrough

LONDON / SAN FRANCISCO / XI'AN – In a week of landmark announcements that signal the accelerating commercialization of space-based solar power (SBSP), global technology giant Meta Platforms has signed a first-of-its-kind capacity reservation agreement to secure up to 1 gigawatt of orbital solar energy, while Chinese researchers have achieved a major technical breakthrough in microwave wireless power transmission under the country's ambitious "Zhu Ri Project" (Chasing the Sun Project).

Taken together, the twin developments underscore a global race to harness the most abundant and reliable energy source in the solar system - sunlight in space, unhindered by atmosphere, weather, or the day-night cycle - and beam it directly to where it is needed most.

Meta announced on April 27 that it has entered into a capacity reservation agreement with Virginia‑based space solar startup Overview Energy, securing early access to up to 1 GW of power from the company's planned orbital solar energy system. The power is intended to support Meta's rapidly expanding artificial intelligence data center infrastructure across the United States, where electricity demand has surged in parallel with the company's massive investments in generative AI.

Under the terms of the agreement between the parties, Overview Energy is going to put satellites into geosynchronous orbit that will be able to collect solar energy 24 hours a day seven days a week without having to deal with the issues related to intermittent generation caused by the lack of afternoon sunshine for solar energy collected by land-based generation methods. Once On the Earth overview will beam energy in the form of low-intensity near-infrared light to existing solar energy facilities on the ground to convert into electricity and connect to traditional utility power grids. Furthermore, this approach does not require acquiring land, burning fuel or completing a lengthy interconnection process. Additionally, the transmitting beam is designed to be safe for humans, animals and other man-made objects while they are on the ground or in flight.

"Space solar technology represents a transformative step forward by leveraging existing terrestrial infrastructure to deliver new, uninterrupted energy from orbit," said Nat Sahlstrom, Meta's Vice President of Energy and Sustainability, in a statement. "This collaboration demonstrates our commitment to innovation - leveraging cutting‑edge technology to strengthen America's energy leadership".

History Energy, established in 2022 as a result of the spin-off from Vast - a developer of a commercial space station - has a very clear goal set out in their roadmap. The company hopes to conduct its first orbital demonstration in 2028, with commercial power delivery expected by 2030. Founder and CEO Marc Berte sees a future where there are 1,000 (in) geosynchronous orbits spacecraft delivering more than a decade of space-based power regularly.

The partnership between Meta and Energy is just the start of many companies in the technology space, turning to space for future growth. Google launched Project Suncatcher this past November (2025) to investigate how solar power could be used to create future generations of AI systems from space. Additionally, Star Catcher (a Florida limited liability company) has recently completed a Series A raise for $65 million and set a world record for optical power beaming by transmitting over 1.1 kW of electrical power to a registered commercial client for their solar panels in a ground demonstration to develop the first off-planet power grid for space.

Industry analysts see a clear economic rationale behind these moves. SpaceX's Starship has driven launch costs down to approximately $60 per kilogram, dramatically improving the economics of deploying large‑scale orbital infrastructure. Orbital solar arrays offer a roughly 30 percent power boost by eliminating atmospheric attenuation and provide approximately five times the energy yield of terrestrial systems by operating outside the day‑night cycle. According to market research firm Global Market Insights, the global space‑based solar power market, valued at $710 million in 2025, is expected to reach $3.3 billion by 2035, representing a compound annual growth rate of 17.1 percent.

On the other side of the Pacific, Chinese researchers have delivered a parallel milestone that addresses one of the most formidable technical challenges facing space‑based solar power: the efficient wireless transmission of energy over long distances to multiple moving targets.

The Zhu Ri Project research team, led by Duan Baoyan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Xidian University, has successfully developed a ground‑based verification system for microwave wireless power transmission capable of delivering kilowatt‑level DC output power over distances of approximately 100 meters. Test data released by the team shows a DC‑to‑DC transmission efficiency of 20.8 percent, a beam collection efficiency of 88.0 percent, and an output power of 1,180 watts.

More significantly, the system has demonstrated "one‑to‑many" dynamic target wireless power transmission, meaning a single transmitting antenna can deliver energy simultaneously to multiple moving receivers. In a separate trial, the system achieved stable DC reception of 143 watts for an unmanned aerial vehicle traveling at 30 kilometers per hour from a distance of 30 meters.

"This represents a full‑system technical upgrade from single‑target to multi‑target transmission," Qian Sihao, associate professor at Xidian University's School of Electromechanical Engineering, explained in a recent interview. "In one‑to‑one mode, the receiving antenna is stationary. Once the targets become dynamic and multiple, the transmitting antenna must precisely direct the energy beam to each moving target in real time".

The breakthrough builds on a decade of sustained research. In 2014, Duan's team first proposed the "Omega" design concept for space solar power stations, a novel architecture that has since become the foundation of China's SBSP efforts. In June 2022, the team completed the world's first full‑link, full‑system ground verification system. The latest advances introduce a distributed Omega architecture, which breaks a single large structure into multiple smaller modules operating in formation flight - a design that enhances system reliability by ensuring that damage to individual modules does not compromise overall performance.

A recent expert evaluation convened by the Shaanxi Provincial Technology Transfer Center concluded that the project's achievements are internationally leading and will play a significant guiding and supporting role in the future development of space solar power stations and microwave wireless power transmission technologies in China.

The convergence of Meta's commercial commitment and China's technical breakthrough suggests that space‑based solar power - a concept first proposed by American scientists in 1968 but long dismissed as prohibitively expensive and technologically infeasible - may finally be approaching a genuine inflection point.

For Meta and other hyperscale data center operators, the appeal of orbital solar energy lies not merely in its clean credentials but in its reliability. Traditional grid connections in the United States now face interconnection queues totaling 160 GW of committed large‑load requests, representing approximately 22 percent of total peak demand. By bypassing terrestrial grids entirely, space‑based solar offers a pathway to energy independence that skirts years of regulatory delays and infrastructure bottlenecks.

In China, the strategic implications are equally profound. A functional space solar power station could provide baseload renewable energy to remote regions, disaster zones, and offshore facilities where terrestrial power infrastructure is impractical to deploy. Moreover, the microwave wireless power transmission technology being developed under the Zhu Ri Project has immediate applications beyond space solar: it could enable the wireless recharging of satellites in orbit, dramatically extending their operational lifetimes, and even power electric vehicles or remote sensors on the ground.

Of course, formidable challenges remain. Deploying a gigawatt‑scale solar array in geosynchronous orbit requires advances in lightweight materials, autonomous in‑orbit assembly, and ultra‑precise beam steering across distances of 36,000 kilometers. Launch costs, though falling, must continue to decline before SBSP can compete with terrestrial renewables on a levelized cost basis. And international regulatory frameworks for orbital power beaming are still in their infancy.

Nevertheless, the events of the past month suggest that the era of space‑based solar power is no longer a question of "whether" but "when." With Meta locking in a 1 GW purchase agreement, with China's researchers demonstrating kilowatt‑level wireless power transmission to moving targets, and with a growing roster of startups attracting serious capital, the pieces are falling into place for what could become the next great energy transition - one that begins not on Earth, but far above it.