Google announced their latest investment in a giant wind farm to power their new data center in the Netherlands. The wind farm is currently under construction by one of Netherland’s lead energy companies, Eneco, and it is set to begin operation in 2016.
Google has been investing enormously in green power projects over the past few years. The tech giant has placed their money on numerous projects, from development of solar cells, all the way to geothermal energy research, but the biggest investments seem to all go towards renewable energy plants to power data centers.
With the news that the tech giant will be opening a new EUR 600m data center on the old continent came the announcement of yet another major investment in renewables- this time it would be wind power.
The agreement has been signed between Google and Eneco, and it states that the center, currently under construction in Emeshaven, north Netherlands, will be fully powered by the massive wind farm at Delfzijl, near Eemshaven, as from the moment the first computer goes on. The farm will be providing all of its output to Google for the coming decade. The data center is supposed to start initial operation some time in 2016, while full operation should be reached by the end of 2017.
According to Google, the onshore-offshore wind farm that is expected to power this will consist of 19 turbines, which will produce 62MW of wind power.
But Google do not seem to be the only ones proud of their renewable energy investments. Just a day after the tech-giant released the announcement, IKEA, another one of our favorites, announced yet another purchase of a wind farm, this time in Texas. It is going to be a second one in the US for the Swedish furniture maker, it will have 55 turbines, which will generate 3MW each as of next year.
Image (c) Google
