Google Announce $20-Billion Investment with Intersect Power & TPG Rise Climate to Co-Locate Data Centers with Renewable Power

In what may be the largest example of the trend toward co-locating power-hungry data centers right next to their power sources, on Dec. 10 Google announced a strategic partnership with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate to develop industrial parks with gigawatts of data center capacity in the U.S. --  co-located with new clean energy plants to power them.

The first phase of the first co-located clean energy project is expected to be operational by 2026 and fully complete in 2027. Additionally, Google, TPG Rise Climate and other investors are making a capital investment in Intersect Power. A post on a Google internal blog said:

“America’s electricity grid planning and investment have not kept pace with the country’s economic growth opportunity. Many regional grids face generation capacity and transmission bottlenecks, leaving them unable to accommodate load increases. As a result, for U.S. power projects, the typical time from proposal to construction has more than doubled, from less than two years for projects built in 2000-2007 to more than four years for those built in 2018-2023.

For U.S. power projects, the typical time from proposal to construction has more than doubled, from less than two years for projects built in 2000-2007 to more than four years for those built in 2018-2023." - Google

"To address these grid constraints, Google’s partnership with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate will deliver new clean energy that is purpose-built and right-sized for the data center. When Intersect Power builds new clean energy assets in regions and projects of interest, Google will be able to provide power offtake as an anchor tenant in the co-located industrial park that would support data center development. Once built, this means the Google data center would come online alongside its own clean power, bringing new generation capacity to the grid to meet our load, reduce time to operation and improve grid reliability.

A post at www.carboncredits.com described the partnership like this: “The core idea behind Google and Intersect Power’s collaboration is the development of energy parks. They are large-scale, co-located renewable energy facilities designed to serve the dual purpose of powering data centers and contributing to the broader power grid. 
“These energy parks will combine solar power generation with storage solutions, enabling Google’s data centers to operate on clean energy. More importantly, the energy parks can also feed excess electricity into the grid, helping to stabilize the energy supply and provide power for other needs.”

An Intersect Power press statement said the strategic partnership between it, TPG Rise Climate and Google  will provide scaled renewable power and storage solutions to new data centers. “The partnership is designed to deliver gigawatts of new data center capacity across the United States with Intersect Power catalyzing a targeted $20 billion in renewable power infrastructure investment by the end of the decade. Intersect Power has already begun financing the partnership’s first co-located clean energy project, which is expected to be operational in 2026 and fully complete by 2027.”

“This innovative ‘power-first’ approach to data center development represents an evolved model for significantly increasing speed of infrastructure deployment, easing grid burden, and improving overall reliability and affordability for energy customers. By co-locating data center load with large amounts of high capacity factor, low-cost, clean electricity, and added battery storage, data centers can achieve high percentages of renewable energy while reducing the transmission required to connect generation to load over longer distances.”

“This partnership is an evolution of the way hyperscalers and power providers have previously worked together. We can and are developing innovative solutions to expand data center capacity while reducing the strain on the grid,” said Sheldon Kimber, CEO and founder of Intersect Power, in the press release. “Deep, collaborative partnerships combined with creative problem-solving are the only way that we can meet the explosion of AI growth, as well as society’s accelerating electricity demand.”

“To realize AI’s potential, the growth in electricity demand must be met with new, clean power sources. The scale of AI presents an opportunity to completely rethink data center development — by co-locating them where possible with the grid-connected carbon-free energy that keeps them up and running,” added Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of Data Center Energy at Google, in the release. “We’re bringing this opportunity to life by combining pioneers at the intersection of data centers and clean energy development to synchronize load growth with new power generation in a novel way. We hope to replicate this model in multiple markets across the U.S. and around the world.”