Google Announces Support for Nation’s Largest Solar Farm, Located in Arkansas

Google is building an AI data center in West Memphis, Arkansas, across the Mississippi River from Memphis. (I know, it’s a very original city name.) Google joins SpaceXAI and others in the Mid-South for cheap land and abundant water, but it faces the same core challenges — mainly, how to feed its huge collection of power-hungry hardware.

When the project was announced, details about power generation were sparse. Today, we know a bit more. Will Conkling and Christopher Scott at Google:

Today, alongside local leaders, community members, and our partners at Cypress Creek Energy, we broke ground on what will be the largest solar facility in the United States — Steel River Energy Center in Mississippi County, Arkansas. While this landmark facility will be the largest solar and storage project across Google’s global portfolio to date, this historic milestone belongs first and foremost to the community in Mississippi County. The Steel River Energy Center will reinvest local workforce talent and industrial innovation right back into the state’s economy, creating lasting clean energy and economic benefits.

By working closely with local leaders and residents, we are ensuring that our growth directly supports our neighbors and strengthens the grid that powers Arkansas’ industrial steel manufacturing,¹ data centers and households alike.

Ground was broken this week on the solar site, complete with blue shovels:

Steve Dent at Engadget has more:

Google has struck a deal to purchase a major solar project’s entire electrical output to offset its fossil fuel emissions, The Financial Times reports. The search giant will take 100 percent of the initial output from Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas once it comes online in 2029, amounting to 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of solar power and 2GW of battery storage — enough to power 315,000 homes. 

Google will pay a fixed cost for the electricity from the solar plant, but won’t use it directly. Instead, it will draw from the grid powered by a mix of coal, nuclear, renewables and natural gas, along with its own on-site power (typically gas turbines and engines).

Energy from the Steel River Energy Center solar project will form part of that grid mix. Once completed, the project will supply 2.45GW of solar power and 2.9GWh of battery energy storage. The first two phases (out of three) received $3.5 billion in financing and prioritized US-manufactured steel and solar panels.

The final mix of power generation isn’t known, but I am glad to see Google investing in such a large renewable energy source to help offset its footprint in the region. Hopefully, this means Google will be much less reliant on gas turbines for power than its neighbors, but time will tell.

This news comes on the same day that folks in 13 states and the District of Columbia are seeing their electricity rates increase due to data center usage, as Ivan Penn reports:

PJM, the nation’s largest electrical grid operator, on Tuesday released results of an electricity auction that would add $6.3 billion in costs to the bills of millions of households and businesses within the next three years, an increase driven by the power demands of data centers.

[…]

In a statement, PJM said data centers were increasing electricity demand throughout the region.

“These auction results show that demand for electricity continues to grow faster than electricity supply,” David Mills, president and chief executive at PJM, said in an announcement of the auction results. “We are working with government and industry leaders on multiple fronts to restore that balance by bringing on new generation as fast as possible and managing the growth of new load on the grid.”