Google has announced its first data center in Minnesota.

The search giant revealed that it is developing a data center in Pine Island, a city located northwest of Rochester, in southern Minnesota.

The company partnered with the city of Pine Island and Minnesota utility Xcel Energy on the project, with the latter supplying power to the new data center. The project's construction timeline was not disclosed.

According to Google, it will pay all costs associated with the facility’s electric service and, in partnership with Xcel, has designed a new contract structure dubbed the Clean Energy Accelerator Charge (CEAC). The CEAC follows the same model as the Clean Transition Tariff (CTT) Google developed with NV Energy, which was designed to create a scalable pathway for utilities and large energy users to invest in clean energy and support companies bringing advanced energy systems to market.

The agreement with Xcel will support the addition of 1.4GW of wind power, 200MW of solar park, and 300MW of iron-air battery storage developed by Form Energy to Xcel’s grid.

Form Energy is based in Somerville, Massachusetts. According to the company, its iron-air battery solution can deliver 100+ hours of storage and has no risk of thermal runaway, a key concern with lithium-ion batteries.

In addition, as part of the CEAC, Google will supply an additional $50 million to support Xcel’s Capacity*Connect Program. The program is designed to install a distributed network of smaller batteries across Xcel’s system in order to increase capacity and improve grid resilience.

Reports about the data center first arose in December last year. At the time, real estate firm Ryan Companies had proposed the facility.

While the project is Google’s first confirmed data center in the state, it is not the first time the company has sought to build one in Minnesota. In December 2022, the company pulled out of a planned data center in Becker, a city northwest of Minneapolis in Sherburne County.

The company has been in talks to develop the $600 million site near the Sherco power plant since 2017, but subsequently pulled out of the project.