If all goes according to plan — a big if, as this is a vision innovators and investors have been chasing for decades — those beams could turn the energy industry on its head. They would enable off-the-shelf solar panels to generate electricity even at night and could more than triple the amount of energy produced by a conventional solar farm.

As the scientists in Ashburn, Virginia, tinker with photovoltaic films, infrared rays and heat-resistant metals, a large wall-mounted digital clock counts down toward January 2028. That’s the deadline their four-year-old start-up, Overview Energy, has imposed for beaming its first batch of power from space.

Not everyone is convinced that the answer is in the stars. Space solar energy has long been dismissed as too impractical, too dangerous and too expensive.

The outlook for the renegade space solar industry, though, has changed markedly in recent months. Like fusion power plants, tiny nuclear reactors and other sci-fi worthy ideas that were largely written off years ago, this one has come roaring back as tech companies and investors grasp for solutions to a power crunch that threatens to stymie the growth of artificial intelligence and chill the U.S. economy.

Meta has signed a contract to secure the first gigawatt of capacity Overview helps generate for its data centers. Big solar manufacturers are scurrying to design new products that could be used by a growing constellation of firms looking to make energy in space with an array of technologies. The U.S. Department of Energy is invested in helping space solar start-ups and university labs speed up development.

The science underpinning Overview’s business plan dates back to NASA’s study of power beaming in the 1970s as a possible solution to that era’s energy crisis.