It's Thursday. Data centers have signed up for gas turbines, fuel cells and restarted reactors. One just agreed to buy sunlight collected in orbit and beamed down as radio waves.
In today's edition:
🛰️ Big Story: A 20-year PPA for space solar
⚡ Quick Hits: an open grid map, Europe's TSO alliance, Gotion's Saudi batteries, a gyrotron for geothermal, BWXT's microreactor
💰 Capital: Novele's $17M Series A
📋 Policy Watch: PJM's delayed auction, NRC rule rewrite, Spain's hourly-matching decree
📊 Chart of the Day: EV charging demand slows
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The Big Story
Brae Systems signs a 20-year PPA for space solar power
Michigan startup Virtus Solis Technologies signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to sell 100 MW of orbital solar power to data center developer Brae Systems, Latitude Media reported. Virtus Solis calls it the world's first commercial space solar PPA. Arrays assembled in orbit would beam power as radio waves to a receiving station to be built in Illinois. The technology is unproven at commercial scale, and first delivery is expected around 2030.
"We operate in radio frequency physics as opposed to photovoltaic physics. The power plants just happen to have an element in orbit and an element on the ground."
The 100 MW would deliver about 876,000 MWh a year, the company said, and Brae holds an option to expand to 250 MW within three years of commercial operation.
A 100 kW pilot is due to launch within 24 months, Latitude reported, with a public technical demonstration set for March 2027.
Bucknell told Latitude the first plant alone would take hundreds of Falcon launches and about 18 Starship launches.
Source: Latitude Media, PR Newswire
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Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
Five milestones, from open grid data to superhot rock.
Texture launched CommonGrid, an open, crowd-edited model of US utilities, grid operators, plants over 1 MW and 69 kV to 765 kV lines, with weekly exports under an open license. Renewable Energy World
Eight European TSOs, from TenneT to Terna, formed a Grid Innovation Alliance and opened a call for grid-enhancing technologies, which a 2024 CurrENT study says could unlock 100 to 200 GW of capacity by 2040. Enlit World
Gotion will supply 6 GWh of batteries, worth about $1.16 billion, to three 500 MW/2 GWh ACWA Power-led projects in Saudi Arabia, roughly 75% of a 2 GW/8 GWh tender. Energy-Storage.news
Kyoto Fusioneering booked its first gyrotron order outside fusion, from Quaise Energy, for superhot geothermal drilling at Project Obsidian in Oregon, planned at 50 MW in phase one. ThinkGeoEnergy
BWXT is fabricating and assembling Project Pele, a 1.5 MW mobile military microreactor, in Lynchburg, Virginia, ahead of delivery to Idaho National Laboratory next year for three years of testing. Axios
The Capital Stack
Novele raises $17M to hang batteries on office walls
Novele closed an oversubscribed $17 million Series A led by impact investor Boisei Labs, Heatmap reported. Its 2-inch-thick, fire-safe lithium-ion batteries mount on the interior walls of offices, hospitals and retail spaces, and machine learning predicts demand spikes so a building can switch to battery power and trim demand charges. The company says paybacks typically run 20 to 40 months and that it has installed systems for several Fortune 50 customers.
Source: Heatmap
Also in the capital stack:
SMT Energy, a battery storage developer and operator, struck an equity partnership with Climate Adaptive Infrastructure worth up to $268 million at the parent-company level. Mercom India
Policy Watch
FERC only partly approved PJM's 6.8 GW reliability backstop auction for data centers, citing cost allocation and collateral rules, so the auction set to open Sept. 30 is postponed with no new date. Chair Laura Swett wrote there was no time "to rehabilitate the mess we received." Utility Dive
The NRC proposed a rule letting builders change reactor designs mid-construction without permission and ending the expiration of standard design approvals, though it estimates savings of only $15.1 million to $22.2 million a year. Canary Media
Spain's draft royal decree would require data centers of 1 MW or more to match 80% of each hour's use with same-hour renewables from plants commissioned within 18 months of opening, which Capflex Energía chair Ignacio López Martín argues makes batteries a licensing condition. Energy-Storage.news
Chart of the Day
US EV charging demand grew just 8% in six months
US light-duty EVs used nearly 14 billion kWh in the first half of 2026, up 8% from the prior six months, against 13% to 24% half-year growth in recent years, EIA estimates. The slowdown followed the end of federal EV tax credits in September 2025.
Source: EIA Today in Energy · September 30, 2026
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