This startup uses drones to change the weather on solar farms

If you’ve just built a new solar farm, the last thing you want is thick clouds overhead. Some clouds can block 80% of sunlight reaching solar panels, sparking growing interest in whether the technology can do anything about cloudy days. Cambridge-trained engineers Mete Karslioglu and Eric Nilsson may have the answer. Running a new company called Meteoric, with support from Y Combinator, they want to use drones to manipulate clouds so that more rays reach solar panels.

As part of broader efforts to make solar power more reliable, Meteoric will send fleets of autonomous drones into clouds to modify their water droplets to reduce their reflectivity, allowing more sunlight to reach the panels. The company says the chemical-free approach could increase annual solar production by up to 30%. Its prototype dissipated an artificial cloud by 13% in cloud chamber tests, but all eyes will be on its outdoor demonstration next year.

Meteoric hasn’t yet explained how its technology works, but the founders’ previous efforts may offer a clue. Karslioglu, for example, has already worked on making clouds more reflective to reflect more sunlight back into space to cool the planet. Meteoric now wants to do the opposite by reducing the reflectivity of clouds so that more sunlight reaches the ground, only in specific locations. Nilsson has worked on systems for detecting and removing tiny water droplets, while the company is also looking for engineers with experience in drones and high-voltage systems. Given all this, it could be that they are exploring a form of electrostatic cloud seeding, using high voltage to condense tiny droplets into large droplets. But the startup ultimately wants to tackle much larger weather systems, and for a completely different reason.

Karslioglu and Nilsson’s ultimate goal is to use their technology to reduce the ferocity of major storms like hurricanes and typhoons. Hurricanes are getting stronger with each passing decade, causing increased risk to human life, as well as important infrastructure and property. The two say that if they can effectively demonstrate their drone technology by dissipating overcast clouds, they want to expand their drone fleet to try to impact the intensity of storms, with actual testing in 2028. But the jump from manipulating the clouds that hang over a solar installation to changing the dynamics of a major storm is huge, and Meteoric has yet to explain how its technology works. Karslioglu and Nilsson seem confident about the potential of their technology, and those following Meteoric’s development will certainly be intrigued to see it leave the lab and finally take flight.

But the two engineers have their work cut out for them as they follow in the footsteps of previous attempts to blunt a hurricane’s awesome power. Ambitious efforts by the U.S. government between 1962 and 1983 to weaken these storms had mixed results. Project Stormfury seeded hurricanes with silver iodide in the hopes that it would generate thunderstorms around the eye of the storm, causing a new eye to form further away and reducing the strength of the storm’s strongest winds. Tests looked promising, with wind strength appearing to decrease by up to 30%. But later analysis found that the changes could not be reliably linked to seeding and that the hurricanes contained too little supercooled water for the technique to work as intended. The project was ultimately abandoned.

While Meteoric wants to send drones into the clouds to try to attract more of the sun’s rays to solar panels, a startup called Reflect Orbital wants to go all the way to space to help increase the efficiency of solar farms. The plan is to deploy satellites with mirrors that can reflect sunlight back to specific areas of Earth. This means that solar farms, for example, could receive more sunlight when the sun is low on the horizon or even already set.

Founded by engineers Ben Nowack and Tristan Semmelhack, Reflect Orbital has already tested the basic concept using a smaller mirror suspended from a high-altitude balloon. Its goal is to launch the first demonstration satellite in late 2026, carrying four reflective panels that unfold to form a 59-square-foot mirror. The plan is to show how the satellite can reliably direct reflected sunlight from its orbit to a chosen location on Earth.

The startup says the same technology could eventually be used to light up remote areas and even disaster areas. Lighting cities at night is also a possibility. But reflecting sunlight comes with challenges. Astronomers, for example, have expressed concerns about the impact on their work of the sun reflecting off satellites. One idea is to coat the satellites with ultra-dark paint to try to reduce the intensity of the sun’s reflection. SpaceX experimented with dark paint for its Starlink internet satellites after astronomers said their reflections obscured the view of deep space. Although the paint used in the test helped reduce the brightness by about half, the overall problem persists. Reflect Orbital says it takes these concerns seriously and wants to work with astronomers to ensure this does not disrupt their work.