The world’s biggest solar producer will build Alabama’s biggest solar farm in Hollywood, Alabama, in the next two years to supply renewable energy for the $600 million data center Google is building on TVA’s former Widows Creek coal plant site.
NextEra Energy Resources will build the new 150-megawatt solar farm near the abandoned Bellefonte nuclear plant and sell the power to the Tennessee Valley Authority to help TVA deliver only renewable energy for Google’s nearby facility.
The $600 million Google data center near TVA’s former Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Jackson County, Alabama takes shape.A similar-sized solar farm also will be built by Invenergy in Yum Yum, Tennessee to supply another Google data center being built near Clarksville, Tennessee.
Collectively, the two solar energy companies will put up 1.6 million solar panels on the two parcels, representing the biggest solar installation in both Tennessee and Alabama and the largest solar farms ever built for Google. Combined, the two new facilities will be capable of generating up to 413 megawatts of electricity at peak periods from the sun.
Google is building the new data centers to help meet the rising demand for data transmissions from the search engine giant. Data process centers handle as many as 100 billion searches for Google every month and 500 hours of video uploads to YouTube every minute.