Overview Energy wants to beam energy from space to existing solar farms

Solar panels that work at night might sound like science fiction, but Overview Energy believes it has the answer: beaming power down from space using infrared lasers. The startup emerged from stealth today with $20 million in funding and an audacious plan to place massive solar arrays 22,000 miles above Earth, where they'll harvest sunlight around the clock and transmit that energy to existing solar farms on the ground.

The company has already tested its power-beaming technology, successfully transmitting energy via laser from an aircraft to a ground receiver three miles away. By reusing existing solar infrastructure rather than building new ground stations, Overview hopes to avoid the safety concerns that plague competitors using tighter, more powerful microwave beams.

The timeline is aggressive: a demonstration satellite in low Earth orbit by 2028, followed by megawatt-scale power delivery from space by 2030. Overview faces formidable challenges, from convincing the public that space-based energy beams won't go astray to competing with rapidly improving batteries and potentially nuclear fusion. Still, as launch costs plummet, what once seemed purely fictional is inching closer to reality.