NTT has signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to procure solar power in Japan.
The company this week said it has signed a 20-year off-site physical corporate PPA with TEPCO Energy Partner Inc. and Promedia Inc.
Starting in August 2024, NTT's Mitaka Data Center EAST will be indirectly powered by new solar power plants totaling 3.7MW in Saitama and Tochigi prefectures. The plans will cover around 20 percent of the facility’s energy needs.
Spanning 38,000 sqm, the 40MW Mitaka East launched in 2018 in the Mitaka City area of Tokyo. The company’s 10th facility, NTT said it is one of the largest data centers in the country and relies on outside air for cooling.
The solar plants will be located in Hanyu City, Saitama Prefecture; and Utsunomiya and Moka Cities, Tochigi Prefecture.
Promedia Inc. is an affiliate company of Advance Co., Ltd., and is involved in the development and leasing of land for renewable power generation projects.
TEPCO said this is the company’s first PPA with a data center customer, and is the country’s largest data center PPA.
However, NTT previously signed a 70MW distributed solar PPA in 2022. Clean Energy Connect was set to develop a total of solar power plants at around 700 locations in Japan by 2023.
PPAs are less common in Japan than in other countries such as the US, with a 2022 report suggesting there were less than two dozen such agreements in the country at the time.
AWS signed a 22MW deal for solar projects at 450 locations across Tokyo and the Tohoku region with Mitsubishi in 2021. The cloud company inked another 38MW distributed solar PPA with Itochu last year.
NTT aims to be net zero by 2030. The company operates 14 data centers in Japan. NTT has previously said it plans to roll out lightweight solar panels across its Japanese facilities.
