24/7 Energy from Space to Grid
The world needs more electricity than the grid can deliver. We can generate it, but we can’t move enough of it to the places that need it. That gap—between where electricity is made and where demand is growing—is the real bottleneck.
That’s the problem we’re solving. And to solve it, we’re looking up.
The most practical, abundant, and overlooked energy solution is the one way up above our heads: turning uninterrupted sunlight in space into directable energy on Earth. This is space solar energy.
Why the ‘someday’ option is now today
For decades, space solar energy lived in the realm of someday. The physics worked, but the economics didn’t. Launch was expensive, hardware was fragile, and the technology to beam power safely to Earth wasn’t ready.
That’s no longer true. Launch costs have dropped more than tenfold, and annual launches have grown just as dramatically. Mass manufacturing satellites is now routine. High-efficiency photovoltaics and high-power, high-efficiency lasers have become inexpensive, reliable, and commercially available.
The market now needs what the technology can finally deliver: on-demand, grid-scale energy that isn’t bound to the ground. The barrier isn’t physics anymore. It’s engineering. And that’s the part we like.
Designing for real-world constraints
From the start, we are treating space solar energy as a clean-sheet engineering problem, not an academic one. To be viable, it has to meet five hard criteria:
- Safety – Transmission must be completely safe for people, wildlife, aircraft, and other satellites.
- Fundability – The first megawatts delivered for under $1 billion.
- Cost – Competitive with other firm power sources.
- Land area – Use significantly less land than traditional solar with battery storage.
- Resilience – No single point of failure, with a distributed design that’s hard to knock offline.
Legacy space solar energy concepts all fail more than one of these criteria. Microwaves raise safety, spectrum, and regulatory concerns and require dedicated receivers the size of towns. Orbital mirrors create disruptive light and offer only an hour or two of daylight extension. Narrow-beam lasers require expensive custom hardware and push up against safety limits as power increases.
We converged on the one design that passes every test: a wide-beam, geosynchronous, near-infrared system that safely delivers power to existing solar projects on Earth. And to do that, we’re focused on optimizing it for real-world constraints, especially cost.
Wide-beam near-infrared: the pragmatic path
We’re building for the grid from day one. Overview’s satellites will operate at an altitude of approximately 36,000 kilometers (about 22,000 miles) in geosynchronous orbit, collecting sunlight continuously and transmitting it as low-intensity, invisible infrared light. The beam is never more intense than the sun, never visible, and never harmful—passively safe for people, wildlife, aircraft, and other spacecraft. It’s the same wavelengths used by night vision security cameras outside of our houses.
Because our receivers are existing solar projects, there’s no new land, no new construction, and no years-long wait for interconnection. Our satellites are the first power plants that can move, directing energy across regions in seconds and across continents in minutes.
That directability creates a fundamentally new kind of value, strengthening the entire energy system and distributing benefits across every part of it. It boosts grid resilience while accelerating industrial growth, reduces costs for consumers while increasing yield for investors, and turns today’s stranded solar capacity into a 24/7 resource.
What that actually looks like: Solar projects can earn revenue during the 65-75% of hours their assets currently sit idle. Utilities can bypass congested corridors and draw on infinite energy reserves above the atmosphere. Households see lower electricity costs as satellites blunt the peaks that drive price spikes. Offtakers like data centers get access to massive energy capacity and can come online in days instead of years. That same resilience supports round-the-clock operational readiness for critical facilities. And for investors, it’s a peaker plant that can move, delivering into the most premium hours of the grid all the time. Essentially, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
Imagine a single satellite constellation that can serve multiple regions in a single day: California at dawn, Morocco at dusk, Chile through the night. Space solar energy will be a critical and unique component of our energy toolkit as electricity demand soars.
Proof in motion as we crawl, walk, run
To make this scale, we’re solving the boring, hard problems first: cost-efficient materials, precise tracking, deployable architecture. Along the way, we’re proving our system in a pragmatic roadmap from lab to aircraft to orbit. Each phase demonstrates the same core technology that will operate in space, focuses on real-world constraints, and brings us towards our cost targets.
Our ongoing airborne program has already demonstrated safe, precise delivery of power from a moving aircraft to solar panels on the ground using the same optics and lasers that will fly in orbit. Next comes low Earth orbit in 2028. Commercial operations in geosynchronous orbit are targeted to begin in 2030 with the world’s first megawatt transmission from space. In the early 2030s, we’ll be capable of delivering more than a gigawatt of 24/7 clean energy anywhere on Earth.
For the first time, power won’t have to stay where it’s made. Energy can move at the speed of need without a single new transmission line.
This is engineering catching up with ambition. Space solar energy, when realized, will be one of the most important innovations in human history. Join us as we fundamentally transform both the energy and space industries.
— Overview Energy team