This startup raised millions to beam solar power from space after dark. Northern Virginia-based Overview Energy is joining the race to beam solar power to Earth from space Another day, another ambitious company emerges to harness the power of the Sun from Earth's orbit. Okay, it's not quite that common an occurrence, but there are indeed a number of firms giving this a go. The latest to join the fold is Overview Energy, a Northern Virginia-based startup that's raised US$20 million to try transmitting solar power from satellites down to solar panels on Earth, enabling a 24/7 supply. Specifically, it plans to use wide-beam near-infrared lasers to continuously deliver power from satellites in geosynchronous orbit (about 22,000 miles or 36,000 km above the Earth's surface) to existing solar farms. At that altitude, the Sun is visible around the clock, which means Overview's constellation could help make use of existing solar projects to generate electricity during the 65%-75% of time during the day when they're otherwise idle. The company notes this can benefit homeowners by reducing electricity price spikes, and increasing the resilience of connected grids powering critical facilities. The same constellation can also serve different regions throughout the day. To prove its tech is up to the task, Overview completed an airborne demo last month, in which a Cessna Caravan light aircraft transmitted power using a laser to a ground receiver made up of conventional solar panels from an altitude of 3 miles (5 km). The startup claims this is the first-ever example of high-power wireless power transfer from any moving platform. And since it uses the startup's own optics chain and lasers that it plans to use in space, along with regular old solar panels on the ground, this validates its approach ahead of scaling things up. It's worth noting that it's still significantly cheaper to deploy more solar panels here on Earth than to capture sunlight and send it down here from space. While beaming power wirelessly from orbit down to Earth is a commendable endeavor, it'll have to practically compete with the possibly simpler route: expanding solar farms on Earth, and further developing battery storage solutions to increase capacity and reduce costs. Overview's sunlight-beaming satellites won't be alone in space. Aetherflux is also gearing up to demo its power transmission system next year with portable ground stations, and UK-based Space Solar hopes to send power to a demonstrator in Iceland by 2030. There's also New Zealand's Emrod, which aims to use a microwave-based transmission system. TechCrunch's Tim De Chant points out that this approach can't reuse existing solar farms and instead relies on proprietary ground stations as receivers; these microwave beams also have to be more powerful, and so the companies behind them have to figure out workarounds that prevent harming passerby birds and aircraft. That makes Overview's near-infrared laser-based method seem more plausible in comparison. Beehivetech also don't yet know enough about the efficiency of this system, and what the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) will work out to be. Up next for Overview is a pilot project, in which it will have a satellite up in low Earth orbit sometime in 2028. Subsequently, the company hopes to begin delivering power from higher up at geosynchronous orbit by 2030. While it's confident that it's validated its solution, with altitude being the only major remaining variable, the proof will be in the solar-oven-baked pudding.

Overview Energy's vision to beam solar power from space. News summary. Overview Energy has emerged from stealth with an ambitious plan to use Earth's solar panels as nighttime power collectors by beaming energy from space. The startup aims to place large solar arrays in geosynchronous orbit to harvest sunlight and use infrared lasers to transmit power to utility-scale solar farms on Earth. This would allow these farms to provide power to the grid almost continuously. Overview has raised $20 million in funding from investors such as the Aurelia Institute and Lowercarbon Capital, part of which has been used for a demonstration where a light aircraft transmitted power using a laser to a ground receiver over 5 kilometers. While the concept holds promise, challenges remain, such as the high cost of deploying solar panels in space and the infancy of wireless power transmission technology. Other companies, like Aetherflux and Emrod, are exploring similar or alternative technologies. Overview plans to launch a satellite into low Earth orbit by 2028 and begin transmitting power from geosynchronous orbit by 2030. Story coverage.

Exclusive: startup emerges from stealth aiming to beam solar energy from space. Overview Energy has raised $20 million already and is targeting a Series A early next year. Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Overview Energy When renowned sci-fi author Isaac Asimov first wrote about space-based solar power in the 1940s, it helped inspire engineers and the federal government alike to take the idea seriously. By the 1970s, a design had been patented and feasibility studies were underway. But those initial efforts didn't get far - challenges with launch costs, constructing the necessary structures in space, and energy conversion efficiency proved too much for scientists to overcome. The space solar company Overview Energy emerged from stealth today, announcing its intention to make satellites that will transmit energy via lasers directly onto the Earth's grid, targeting preexisting utility-scale solar installations. The startup has already raised $20 million in a seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital, Prime Movers Lab, and Engine Ventures, and is now working on raising a Series A. The core thesis behind Overview is to allow solar farms to generate power when the sun isn't shining, turning solar into a firm, 24/7 renewable resource. What's more, the satellites could direct their energy anywhere in the world, depending on demand. California solar farms, for example, could receive energy in the early morning hours. Then, as the sun rises over the West Coast and sets in Europe, "we switch the beam over to Western Europe, Morocco, things in that area, power them through the evening peak," Marc Berte, the founder and CEO of Overview Energy, explained. "It hits 10 p.m., 11 p.m., most people are starting to go to bed if it's a weekday. Demand is going down. But it's now 3 p.m. in California, so you switch the beam back." That so-called "geographic untethering" will be a key factor in making all of this economically feasible one day, Berte told me. The startup is targeting between $60 and $100 per megawatt-hour by 2035, when it aims to be putting gigawatts of commercial space solar on the grid. "It's 5 o'clock somewhere," Berte told me. "You're profitable at $100 bucks a megawatt-hour somewhere, instantaneously, all the time." Making the math pencil out has also meant developing super-efficient lasers and eliminating all power electronics on its custom spacecraft. The type of light Overview beams to earth - called "near-infrared" and invisible to the naked eye - is also very efficiently converted into electricity on a solar cell. While pure sunlight is only converted at 20% efficient, near-infrared light is converted at 50% efficiency. Thus, Overview enables solar panels to operate even more efficiently during the night than during the day. Today, the startup also announced the successful demonstration of its ability to transmit energy from a moving aircraft to a ground receiver three miles below - the first time anyone has beamed high power from a moving source. Although Overview's satellites will eventually need to transmit light from much farther away - around 22,000 miles from Earth - the test proved that the fundamental technical components work together as planned. "There's no functional difference from what we just did from an airplane to what we're going to do in 10 years at gigawatts from space," Berte told me. "The same beacon, the same tracking, the same mirror, the same lasers, all the same stuff, just an airplane instead of space." Overview's ultimate goal is ambitious to say the least: It's aiming to design a system that can deliver the equivalent of 10% to 20% of all global electricity use by 2050. To get there, it's aiming to put megawatts of power on the grid by 2030 and gigawatts by the mid-2030s. Its target customers include independent power producers, utilities, and data centers, and the company currently has a SpaceX launch booked for early 2028. At this point, Berte says Overview will likely be starting up its own prototype production line, which it will scale in the years to follow. That certainly won't be a simple undertaking. To produce a gigawatt of power, Overview will need to deploy 1,000 huge satellites, each measuring around 500 to 600 feet across and weighing about 8 to 10 tons. The largest satellites currently in space are about 100 to 150 feet across, and roughly 5 to 10 tons. "No one really mass-manufactures satellites in the kind of quantities required," Berte explained, and nobody is producing the design and form factor that Overview requires. "So we are going to have to in-source a lot of the integration for that." But while the startup's satellites will span the length of about two football fields, they fold up neatly into a package about the size of a shipping container, making it possible for them to fit on a SpaceX rocket, for example. When the satellites beam their power down to Earth, they'll target a beacon - also shipping container-sized - that will be placed in the middle of the solar farm. Initially, Berte told me, Overview will target deployment in places where logistical challenges make energy particularly expensive - think Alaska or island states and territories such as Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. But first, the company must demonstrate that its tech works from thousands of miles away. That's what the funding from its forthcoming Series A, which Berte expects to close in spring of next year, is intended for. "That is to take us to the next step, which is now do it in space. And after that, it's now do it in space, but big," he told me. "So it's crawl, walk, run, but most importantly, the technology and how you do it doesn't change." Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.