Continuous power, for 20 years, from solar panels in orbit. First delivery targeted around 2030.
On October 1, Virtus Solis Technologies, a startup based in Troy, Michigan, signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Chicago-based Brae Systems. The deal calls for 100 megawatts of continuous power, about 876,000 megawatt-hours a year, with an option for Brae to grow it to 250 megawatts within three years. The power would feed Brae's planned underwater data centers.
The catch, and it is a big one, is that the power plant does not exist yet. Virtus Solis plans to build solar stations in orbit and beam the energy to a receiving station in Illinois as microwaves. Its design puts modular, snap-together panels in highly elliptical Molniya orbits, chosen because reusable rockets can reach them and come back. The company says it plans a 100-kilowatt pilot within 24 months and a public demonstration of wireless power transfer in March 2027.
"The first customer is signed. The first kilowatt is still in the future."
The person behind it is John Bucknell, co-founder and CEO. Bucknell spent time at SpaceX early in the company's life, working on the Raptor engine that now powers Starship, then went back to building in his own corner of Michigan. Virtus Solis has operated mostly in stealth, funded by venture capital and government grants, including roughly 2 million dollars from the federal ARPA-E program awarded in January 2025.
The skeptics have real points. An earlier demonstration reportedly reached only about 4 percent efficiency, and the company is aiming for well over 50. A single Falcon 9 launch runs around 74 million dollars. And the last time a utility signed a space solar contract, a deal between PG&E and a startup called Solaren in 2009, it was cancelled in 2015 when the financing never arrived. A signed contract is a promise, not a power plant.
Still, the direction is worth watching. AI data centers are pulling electricity at a pace the grid is struggling to meet, and buyers are now willing to sign 20-year contracts for power that has not been built. Whoever solves clean, always-on supply gets a customer list waiting at the door.
The ANF Take. Detroit taught the world to build things at scale, and the Troy-to-orbit story is the same instinct pointed at a new frontier. Young builders in this region often assume the big technology bets happen on the coasts. This one was signed in suburban Troy. Whether Virtus Solis delivers or not, the lesson holds: ambitious hardware can start here, and the people who try it are worth knowing before the headlines catch up.
Sources: pv magazine USA (October 1, 2026), Latitude Media, Hoodline.
