Google Does It Again: Buys Wind To Power European Data Center

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Continuing its plan to purchase the output from wind farms to provide energy for its data centers, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google is applying a similar strategy in Sweden.

Google says it plans to buy all of the wind power from a 72 MW (using 3 MW turbines) wind farm in northern Sweden that will be built and operated by Swedish developer O2.

Google says it has committed to buying the entire output of the wind farm for 10 years so that it can power its Finnish data center with renewable energy. That agreement has helped O2 secure 100% financing for the construction of the wind farm from the investment arm of German insurance company Allianz, which will assume ownership when the wind farm becomes operational in early 2015.


Google's initial foray into wind energy procurement dates back to 2010, when the company worked directly with NextEra Energy Resources to purchase 114 MW of wind power from NextEra's Story County II wind farm, located in Iowa. Two years later, Google signed another power purchase agremeent with NextEra for 100.8 MW of wind energy generation from the company's Minco II wind farm, located in Oklahoma.

In September 2012, Google signed an agreement with the Grand River Dam Authority to supply Google's Mayes County, Okla., data center with 48 MW of wind energy from the Canadian Hills Wind project, located in west-central Oklahoma.

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