Google makes first investment in utility-scale wind farms

2010-05-06 18:51:00

Search engine Google has made its first direct investment in utility-scale renewable energy, at two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced on Friday that it has invested $38.8 million in the 120MW Ashtabula II wind project in Barnes County and the 49.5MW Wilton Wind 2 wind farm in Burleigh County. The two wind farms in North Dakota were developed by Florida-based wind energy company NextEra Energy Resources, which sold $190 million in membership interests in its projects last week. Using existing transmission capacity to deliver their power, the Google-backed wind farms generate 169.5 megawatts of energy – enough to provide electricity for more than 55,000 homes. “Good business sense” Rick Needham, Green Business Operations Manager, said his company was aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy “in a way that makes good business sense”. Commenting on the North Dakota wind projects, he said: “We’re excited about this first project investment because it uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid.” Google, which has its head office in California’s Silicon Valley, is believed to have 12 data centers located around the US. The company already uses some renewable energy to meet its huge power requirements, such as the hydropower used for its data center at The Dalles, Oregon. Previous estimates suggest the company’s 450,000 servers could require upwards of 20-megawatts of power to keep running, though the company does not discuss its energy consumption figures. “Philanthropic” Although the North Dakota wind farms will not provide power for Google’s own operations, the company which achieves revenues of $3.6 billion per quarter said it aimed to invest in renewable energy projects in order to drive progress in the technology. Mr Needham said Google had been pushing for new energy technologies through its “philanthropic arm”, investing in early-stage renewable energy companies like eSolar and AltaRock. He said: “Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. “To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects,” said the Google Green Business Operations Manager.

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