Facebook has signed a long term power purchase agreement (PPA) with Luxcara, an asset manager for renewable energy investments in the Nordic region.
Image: Facebook buys green electricity from Luxcara to power Nordic data centers. Photo: Courtesy of Jim Frech/FreeImages.com.
As per the PPA, Luxcara will supply renewable energy of about 294MW from the three wind farms, including Gravdal, Skinansfjellet and Eikeland-Steinsland in southwest Norway, to Facebook.
The three projects are collectively known as the Bjerkreim cluster and will include 70 of 4.2MW turbines. These wind projects are expected to reach commercial operation in the last quarter of next year.
With the PPA with Facebook, a long term financial certainty has been established for the projects, stated Luxcara. For the three projects, Luxcara claims to be investing €400m. The 294MW capacity is projected to add more than 1,000GWh of clean and renewable energy to the Nordic grid each year.
These three wind farms are part of a portfolio of renewable energy assets for institutional investors managed by Luxcara. Once operational, Bjerkreim and Egersund will increase its wind energy portfolio in Norway to more than 400 MW.
Facebook energy and infrastructure commercial director Vince Van Son said: “We are excited to partner with Luxcara on our largest European renewable energy solution to date. Facebook is committed to bringing new supplies of renewable energy to the electric grid not only to support our facilities, but to encourage the growth of clean and renewable resources.”
Facebook has signed long term supply and service agreements with Vattenfall for the integration of the output from the three wind farms into the electric grid that will supply power to Facebook’s Nordic data centres in Odense, Denmark, and Luleå in Sweden.
Vattenfall has also been selected as electricity supplier to Facebook’s data centre facilities in Odense and Luleå.
Vattenfall business sales nordic vice president Branislav Slavic said: “Vattenfall is very proud to have expanded its long-term cooperation with Facebook to include integrating their supply of new renewable energy into the Nordic electric grid. The balancing services agreement is Vattenfall’s largest agreement with an external partner in the Nordics.”