Solar developer Leeward Renewable Energy has signed a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with tech giant Google, which will support over 700MW of solar PV in the US state of Oklahoma.
The agreement will support the construction of six PV plants, with a combined capacity of 724MW, which will be sited to support Google’s data centre operations.
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Construction started on the 372MW Mayes County Solar Portfolio, which is within one mile of a Google data centre in Pryor. The project was acquired from Red River Renewable Energy, a joint venture between solar developer SunChase Power and energy investor Eolian and consists of three PV plants. These are the Salt Branch Solar (145MW), Huckleberry Solar (125MW), and Mayes Solar (102MW).
The energy generated by the solar portfolio is delivered under firm transmission service to the Grand River Dam Authority which will be utilised to support operations at Google’s data centres.
“By partnering with Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) and LRE, Google is furthering its ambition to power our facilities, including those in Oklahoma, with carbon-free energy around the clock by 2030,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data center energy at Google.
“These power purchase agreements demonstrate how our scalable procurement approach is transforming the acquisition of clean energy and accelerating the development of carbon-free energy sources.“
Moreover, the other projects are the Twelvemile Solar Projects 1 & 2, which have a combined capacity of 152.5MW, and Twelvemile 3 Solar Project, which has a capacity of 200MW.
Growing need for solar PV to power data centres
This is the latest PPA Google has secured to provide electricity to its data centres. Last October, a 900MW solar PV cluster in the southern state of Texas began commercial operations and it will provide electricity to Google’s data centres in the region.
The tech giant is among the leading US companies in solar PV investments (with 2.6GW), only behind fellow tech giants Meta (5.2GW) and Amazon (4.7GW).
Technological companies are leading the way in the US by securing solar PV to supply electricity to their ever-growing data centre portfolios. Last month, Meta secured several PPAs to power its growing data centre demand, with a 120MW solar PV PPA in Oregon and another 400MW PPA in Missouri and Texas.
Furthermore, Chris Rauscher, head of grid services of virtual power plants (VPPs) at Sunrun told PV Tech Premium that virtual power plants could offer a quicker deployment for data centres in the US compared to other technologies.
