Solar project developer Candela Renewables will provide Google with 140MW of power from a facility in Texas as part of a new power purchase agreement.
As part of the deal, Candela will develop a new solar power project to supply green energy to Texas’ ERCOT power grid.
Unlock unlimited access for 12 whole months of distinctive global analysis
Photovoltaics International is now included.
- Regular insight and analysis of the industry’s biggest developments
- In-depth interviews with the industry’s leading figures
- Unlimited digital access to the PV Tech Power journal catalogue
- Unlimited digital access to the Photovoltaics International journal catalogue
- Access to more than 1,000 technical papers
- Discounts on Solar Media’s portfolio of events, in-person and virtual
The collaboration stems from Google’s ambition to purchase 1.6GW of renewable electricity via 18 energy deals. Announced last September, the clean energy ramp-up sees the tech giant purchase energy from 720MW of solar farms, split between Texas (490MW), North Carolina (155MW) and South Carolina (75MW) – more than doubling the capacity of its global solar portfolio as of 2019.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that most of the company’s renewable energy purchases in the US were wind-driven up until last year, but the declining cost of solar “made harnessing the sun increasingly cost-effective”.
Google, with 1,107MW, was second only to Facebook (1,546MW) last year in terms of corporate renewable energy procurement in the US, according to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance.
Candela Renewables, which was founded in 2018 by former First Solar employees, has a portfolio of more than 3.6GW of utility-scale solar projects and 2.2GW of co-located energy storage.
“The team at Candela has pushed itself to not just develop renewable power and storage, but to create projects and find partners that move the entire industry forward in innovative ways that have an impact beyond an individual piece of infrastructure,” the company said.
