American energy company AES Corporation announced this week that it has entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft to deliver renewable energy to its California data centers.
Microsoft will partially match its electricity demand at their California-based data centers under a “highly customized agreement,” according to AES. The electricity will be sourced by AES from a portfolio of 110 MWac solar and 55 MW storage projects in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) region.
“Microsoft continues to be a leader in the clean energy transition,” stated Andrés Gluski, President and CEO of AES. “Working in tandem with Microsoft, we co-created a scalable 24/7 carbon-free solution to power its data centers in Virginia, and we are now proud to move forward on another innovative renewable energy supply structure in California.”
Connecting data centers to renewable energy sources is a specialty for AES, which has also secured a 10-year contract to supply Google’s Virginia-based data centers with carbon-free electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“AES’ presence and critical capabilities in California will support our transition to 100% renewable energy by 2025 and enable us to move forward in having 100% of our electricity matched by zero-carbon resources all the time in the state,” said Brian Janous, Microsoft’s general manager of energy and renewables.
This arrangement builds on AES’s previous supply agreement with Microsoft, a 15-year supply deal signed in November 2021, under which AES would supply renewable energy to Microsoft’s Virginia data centers using both present and future renewable energy projects. In Chile, the two firms have also reached a deal in April.
Over the last year, Microsoft has inked new power purchase agreements for more than 5.8 GW of renewable energy across 10 countries in more than 35 separate transactions. Globally, the business has secured contracts totaling more than 7.8 GW.
