Google has deepened its partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) to support the commercialization of its nuclear fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

As part of the tie-up, Google signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for 200MW of power from its inaugural ARC plant. The plant has a planned capacity of 400MW, and is projected to deliver its first power to the Virginia grid in the early 2030s. Google also has the option to offtake additional power from future ARC plants.

The project will be located at the James River Industrial Park in Chesterfield County and is expected to be the first fusion project of its kind to deliver power to an electricity grid, should it launch on schedule.

The PPA builds on the relationship between the two companies, with Google an investor in CFS since 2021.

"By entering into this agreement with CFS, we hope to help prove out and scale a promising pathway toward commercial fusion power. We're excited to make this longer-term bet on a technology with transformative potential to meet the world's future energy demand, and support CFS in their efforts to reach the scientific and engineering milestones needed to get there," said Michael Terrell, head of advanced energy at Google.

The agreement is anchored by CFS’ SPARC tokamak reactor - a compact version of a fusion device - achieving net fusion. The project, based out of the company’s Massachusetts headquarters, is a precursor to the ARC project and aims to verify the technology and physics required to build a power plant based on the ARC fusion power plant concept.

SPARC is scheduled to commence operations in 2026 and aims to demonstrate net power in Q1 2027. In March, the company said that it had successfully installed the cryostat base, essentially the foundation of what will form the tokamak reactor.

ARC stands for 'affordable, robust, compact,' while SPARC adds 'smallest possible' as a prefix to the aforementioned acronym.

"Fusion power is within our grasp thanks in part to forward-thinking partners like Google, a recognized technology pioneer across industries," said Bob Mumgaard, CEO and co-founder of CFS.

"Our strategic deal with Google is the first of many as we move to demonstrate fusion energy from SPARC and then bring our first power plant online. We aim to demonstrate fusion's ability to provide reliable, abundant, clean energy at the scale needed to unlock economic growth and improve modern living – and enable what will be the largest market transition in history."

Unlike nuclear fission - the reaction utilized in traditional nuclear power plants - which involves the splitting of heavy nuclei to generate energy, nuclear fusion reverses the process by combining light nuclei into a heavier one. If successfully commercialized, fusion has the potential to provide an almost limitless source of energy.

However, significant barriers remain, including high upfront costs, risk of heat damage, and plasma confinement. As a result, doubts remain as to whether fusion can be successfully commercialized in the near term, with most projections after the 2040s.

The deal with Google follows the successful raise of more than $1 billion by CFS in May. CFS was founded in 2018 and has raised more than $2bn in its quest to commercialize nuclear fusion. The company also counts Microsoft as one of its backers, with the company providing cloud services to CFS.

The fundraise is part of a broader push by data center developers to back the technology, as a potential unlimited source of power for data centers.

In addition to CFS, Google has also backed fusion developer TAE Technologies, which recently raised more than $150 million in its latest funding round. Google has collaborated with TAE since 2015, and has deployed its machine learning expertise to help develop advanced plasma reconstruction algorithms, which TAE has said have led to significantly improved performance.

OpenAI has also indicated a willingness to purchase fusion energy to power its data center operations. Last year, it was reported that the company was in talks to purchase "vast quantities" of power from Helion, a fusion power startup backed by OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman.