Thursday 19 September 2013

Google buys entire output from Texas wind farm

Google is upping its green credentials with a new agreement to buy the entire output from a wind farm in Texas.

The Happy Hereford wind farm, which is expected to start producing electricity late next year, will have a total capacity of 240MW and will provide energy to the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) – the regional grid that serves Google’s data centre in Oklahoma.

The search engine giant also bought the entire electricity output from a Swedish wind farm developer earlier this year to power its data centre in Finland.

The latest announcement brings Google's wind energy portfolio to more than 570MW - enough energy to power around 170,000 households – and is part of its quest to power all of its operations with 100% renewable energy.

It is also investing $12 million (£7.89m) in a solar power plant to be built in South Africa’s Northern Cape as reported by ELN earlier this year.