Google on Tuesday announced it`s launching a solar energy project in Taiwan to support its local data center. The project is the outcome of months of negotiations with other companies and the Taiwanese government. which only recently changed the country`s Electricity Act to allow non-utility companies to directly buy renewable energy. With this project. Google is the first non-utility company to do so in Taiwan.
Working with development partners Diode and New Green Power . Google will set up a 10-megawatt solar farm in Tainan City. Taiwan. The project site is 100 kilometers south of Google`s Changhua County data center and connected to the same regional power grid.
The project gives Google a long-term. fixed price for electricity at the Taiwan location. and it will bring Google closer to its goal of powering all of its data centers with renewable energy. around the clock.
Google is already the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy. It`s signed onto more than 30 solar and wind deals in the Americas and Europe since 2010. and the Taiwanese project marks its first clean energy project in Asia.
Along with the Taiwan deal. Google also recently announced its largest solar deal to date: two major solar farms in Tennessee and Alabama.
`Both of these deals are proof points to our commitment to building out the most reliable and largest network in the world but also doing it in the most sustainable fashion.` Joe Kava. VP of Data Centers at Google. told ZDNet. `We`re responding to the growth of our public cloud demand. but we`re doing it in a totally sustainable way.`
It`s unclear when Google will be able to reach its goal of powering all of its data centers with around-the-clock renewable energy. given that there are still markets where it can`t purchase energy directly.