US solar project developer Avangrid has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Oregon state utility Portland General Electric (PGE) for its 120MW Tower Solar project in Morrow County, Oregon.
Power from the project, which is under construction, will be sold to PGE under a 25-year contract and marketed through its Green Future Impact (GFI) scheme. This scheme allows large corporate and industrial customers to purchase renewable energy certificates (RECs) for projects connected to PGE’s grid.
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The RECs from the Tower Solar project will be sold to data centre firm QTS, which is constructing a data centre for cloud data giant Meta in the region. Meta has committed to using 100% renewable energy for its operations.
By using RECs, companies pay for the renewable energy produced at a site without necessarily sourcing their electrons from renewable sources.
Tower Solar will be located on industrially-zoned land designated for industrial projects owned by the Port of Morrow. Avangrid said it will deploy around 200,000 solar modules once construction is complete in 2026. The company did not confirm the module technology or suppliers for the site.
Pedro Azagra, Avangrid CEO, said: “Projects like this are important to furthering the country’s energy independence and represent our continued investment in the region.”
PPA deals to supply data centres are becoming more common. Avangrid and Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – have already struck a supply deal for the 240MW True North solar project in Texas to supply power to a data centre in the state, and tech and data giants including Amazon, Meta and Google have become the largest private buyers of solar power in the US.
“The Green Future Impact program allows PGE to partner with our largest customers like QTS to meet their ambitious sustainability goals through local clean energy,” said Brett Greene, PGE senior director of clean energy origination and structuring.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast that, while data centres may not play a huge role in the global growth in electricity demand over the coming decade, their impact on a local level could be significant.
“In large economies like the United States, China and the European Union, data centres account for around 2-4% of total electricity consumption today. But because they tend to be spatially concentrated, their local impact can be pronounced,” an IEA article from October said. “The sector has already surpassed 10% of electricity consumption in at least five US states. In Ireland, it now accounts for over 20% of all electricity consumption.”
According to the website Data Centre Map, Oregon currently has 113 data centres, 30 of which are in the Boardman market. This is the same region where Tower Solar is being built, though the data centre may be elsewhere in PGE’s remit.
This makes Oregon the state with the eighth-most data centres in the US, as per the website’s data. All of the listed data centres in and around Boardman are owned by Amazon Web Services, the data collection and storage subsidiary of online marketplace Amazon.
Data from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), a US trade body, shows that Amazon has the largest contracted solar project pipeline of any US corporation, with over 13.5GW of capacity.
