Energy Transition

RWE's latest Big Tech power buyer breaks cover as pair sign Texas wind deal

PPA with tech giant Microsoft will underpin two new onshore wind farms in Texas using Vestas turbines

RWE finance chief Michael Muller.
RWE finance chief Michael Muller.Photo: RWE
Senior Correspondent

RWE has signed 15-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Microsoft for the supply of energy from two onshore wind projects in Texas with a combined capacity of 446MW.

The Germany utility alluded to the deal in its first quarter earnings call earlier this month when, without identifying the customer, chief financial officer (CFO) Michael Müller told analysts that RWE had just signed with a Big Tech company for over 400MW, "and at an attractive price".

He added that PPA deals with Big Tech companies already account for about half of RWE's contracted capacity in the US.

RWE said its latest PPA deal would "support Microsoft’s goal of achieving 100% coverage of electricity consumption with renewable energy by 2025".

The onshore wind farms that will provide the green electrons are the 243NW Peyton Creek II project, which already under construction, and the 203MW Lane City wind farm, for which a final investment decision has just been taken.

RWE has ordered V163 4.5 MW Vestas turbines for the two projects.

RWE said the two new onshore wind farms will expand its footprint in Texas to nearly 5GW. Currently the company has 33 operational renewable projects totalling 4.3GW of installed capacity, enough to power 2.76 million homes per year.

Andrew Flanagan, CEO of RWE Clean Energy stated: “Once the two projects are completed, RWE’s renewables footprint in Texas will grow to 4.8GW, strengthening its position in this section of the ERCOT market. This will add to RWE's current renewables portfolio in the US of 9.3 GW across wind, solar and batteries.”

Green deal

Demand for renewable power from Big Tech companies – driven by the growth of of data centres for cloud computing and, increasingly, artificial intelligence – is creating a “sellers market” for green electrons according to some industry leaders, and appears to be giving corporate PPAs an increasing share of the offtake from big renewable energy projects.
In arguably the biggest example of this trend so far, Microsoft agreed a month ago to back renewable energy projects totaling about 10GW from the clean power arm of infrastructure energy giant Brookfield Asset Management.
Amazon’s cloud computing unit this week said it is investing €15.7bn ($17bn) in green-powered data centres in Spain and signed deals with a dozen new wind and solar projects across the country.
Goldman Sachs recently reported that meeting the energy demands of data centres using power-hungry AI could represent a near-$1tn opportunity for the renewables sector.
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Published 23 May 2024, 15:48Updated 23 May 2024, 15:48
RWETexasERCOTUSGermany