Lightsource bp has announced that its 188MW Honeysuckle solar plant in St. Joseph County, Indiana, has entered commercial operation.
The project is tied to a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with Google, which will offset the majority of the power generated. Google will reportedly use the solar capacity to power its $2 billion data center campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The Fort Wayne data center was officially announced in April. Details of the data center, including location, specifications, and timeline for development, were not shared.
However, filings with local government under the name ‘Project Zodiac’ – previously confirmed to be Google – suggest a 12-building campus spanning more than 700 acres.
“We have an ambitious goal to operate every Google campus on clean electricity every hour of every day by 2030, which will include our Fort Wayne data center once it comes online,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of data center energy. “We look forward to working with Lightsource bp to support our Indiana operations,” she continued.
Google has signed several PPAs within the US market over recent months. These include a 12-year PPA with EnergyRe to purchase energy from an unnamed 435MW solar project.
In addition, it has signed solar PPAs with EDPR and NextEra Energy in Indiana and Nebraska, respectively.
Finally, in September, it signed a PPA that will see the search giant offtake from X-Elio’s 128MW Bell Solar PV Plant from 2025.
In April, it was reported that Google had signed 1.5GW worth of PPAs over the previous 12-month period, facilitated through a new PPA procurement process developed in partnership with LevelTen Energy.
