100 MW of 24/7 power: Virtus Solis to send 876,000 MWh a year into Illinois

Space-based solar power startup Virtus Solis Technologies will supply 100 megawatts of continuous, round-the-clock orbital solar power to a dedicated receiving station being built in Illinois, under a new 20-year supply agreement with computing infrastructure company Brae Systems. The arrangement is being described as the first commercial space-based solar power purchase agreement of its kind.

The initial 100-megawatt supply is expected to deliver 876,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually once operational. The agreement also includes an option for Brae to expand that capacity to 250 megawatts within three years of initial commercial operations, which would raise annual output to roughly 2.19 million megawatt-hours. Together, the deal represents a multi-billion-dollar lifetime contract commitment.

Power for subsea servers

The electricity is intended to run Brae’s next-generation computing infrastructure, which the company builds inside underwater data centers rather than conventional land-based facilities. Submerging GPU compute clusters in marine environments lets Brae take advantage of natural, cost-free liquid cooling, while avoiding land constraints and construction costs that come with traditional data center sites.

Brae CEO Vishnu Indukuri said pairing underwater cooling with a dedicated, predictable power source lets the company’s GPU infrastructure run with stable costs and no carbon emissions, independent of conventional grid disruptions.

Beaming power down

Unlike ground-based solar or wind power, which typically require battery storage to manage gaps in generation, Virtus Solis transmits its orbital solar power continuously using radio-frequency wireless power transfer technology. The company says this approach can deliver true around-the-clock baseload power with guaranteed uptime of 99.9%.

Virtus Solis is developing the power electronics needed for this kind of orbital generation with support from a $2 million corporate development agreement with ARPA-E, the US Department of Energy’s advanced research agency. The company’s next major technical milestone will come in March 2027, when it plans to conduct a public demonstration aimed at setting a new efficiency record for wireless power transfer.

A milestone for orbital energy

Virtus Solis founder and CEO John Bucknell said the agreement marks a turning point for both the broader energy transition and the computing infrastructure needed to support growing artificial intelligence workloads. He added that the company’s orbital solar architecture sidesteps the land and atmospheric limits that constrain conventional power generation on Earth.

Bucknell is scheduled to speak at the Space Solar Power Symposium, hosted by POWER Magazine and the Space Frontier Foundation in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, where he will join a keynote discussion on the role of space-based energy in future power systems.