1 week Ago By JENNIFER MCDERMOTT Associated Press
One of the largest solar projects in the U.S. has opened in Texas, backed by what Google said is the largest solar electricity purchase it has ever made.
Google executive Ben Sloss said at the ribbon cutting Friday, about two hours south of Dallas, that the corporation has a responsibility to bring renewable, carbon-free electricity online at the same time it opens operations that will use that power. Google expects to spend $16 billion through 2040 globally to purchase clean energy, he said. U.
S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who attended, said the solar project is a posterchild for the administration's efforts to incentivize manufacturers and developers to locate energy projects in the U.S.
"Sometimes when you are in the middle of history, it's hard to tell, because you are in the middle of it," she said. "But I'm telling you right now that we are in the middle of history being made." SB Energy built three solar farms side by side, the "Orion Solar Belt," in Buckholts, Texas.
Combined, they will be able to provide 875 megawatts of clean energy. That is nearly the size of a typical nuclear facility. In total, Google has contracted with clean energy developers to bring more than 2,800 megawatts of new wind and solar projects to the state, which it says exceeds the amount of power required for its operations there.
Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all recently announced investments in nuclear energy to power data centers, too, as the tech giants seek new sources of carbon-free electricity to meet surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence. Google has a commitment to get all of its electricity without contributing to climate change, regardless of time of day or whether the sun is up, but neither it nor other large companies are meeting those commitments with the rise of artificial intelligence. The International Energy Agency forecasts that data centers' total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, more than doubling from 2022.
Estimates suggest one terawatt-hour can power 70,000 homes for a year. The demand for power is also growing globally as buildings and vehicles electrify. People used more electricity than ever last year, placing strain on electric grids around the world.
In August, Google said it planned to invest more than $1 billion in Texas this year to support its cloud and data center infrastructure. Google will use about 85% of the project's solar power for data centers in Ellis County and for cloud computing in the Dallas region. In Ellis County, Google operates a data center campus in Midlothian and is building out a new campus in Red Oak.
The rest of the solar power will go to the state's electrical grid. Thousands of sheep graze in the area, maintaining the vegetation around the solar arrays. "This project was a spreadsheet and a set of emails that I had been exchanging and a bunch of approvals and so on.
And then you come over the rise over there and you see it laid out in front of you and it kind of takes your breath away, right? Because there's this enormous field of solar arrays," Sloss said during the ceremony. "And we actually collectively have done this. That is amazing.
" SB Energy said most of the solar farm components are made in the United States, and that's possible because the climate law formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act spurred clean energy manufacturing. The company expects the projects to be the first to qualify for an extra tax credit the law affords for using domestic content. Meanwhile, Amazon also announced last week that it is investing in small nuclear reactors.
Those plans come as the owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant said last month it plans to restart the reactor so tech giant Microsoft can buy the power to supply its data centers. Nuclear energy is a climate solution in that its reactors don't emit the planet-warming greenhouse gases that come from power plants that burn fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas. "AI is driving a significant increase in the amount of data centers and power that are required on the grid," said Kevin Miller, Amazon Web Services' vice president of global data centers, adding: "We view advanced new nuclear capacity as really key and essential.
" The United States aims to reach 100% clean electricity by 2035. Granholm said small modular reactors are a "huge piece of how we're going to solve this puzzle," a way to phase out fossil fuel power while responding to the increasing electricity demand from data centers and new factories. She said her department will provide $900 million to deploy more of the reactors.
Small modular reactors are a type of nuclear reactor that can generate up to roughly one-third the amount of power of a traditional reactor. Developers say small reactors will be built faster and at a lower cost than large power reactors, scaling to fit needs of a particular location. They aim to begin using them to produce electricity in the early 2030s, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gives permission to build and operate their designs and the technology succeeds.
If new, clean power isn't added as data centers are developed, the U.S. runs the risk of "browning the grid," or including more power that isn't made from clean sources, said Kathryn Huff, a former U.
S. assistant secretary for nuclear energy who is now an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The reactors are currently under development, with none providing power to the electric grid in the U.
S. Big investors can help change that, and the announcements like those of Google and Amazon could be the "inflection point" that makes scaling up the technology truly possible, Huff said. Get local news delivered to your inbox!.
