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Is anyone in the US using solar and wind to power new datacenters?
Yes — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are all doing it, accounting for 98.7% of large-scale US corporate renewable PPAs, with a combined 84 GW of solar and wind under contract to power their data centers.
Why it matters: Renewables are the dominant procurement strategy for hyperscalers, but intermittency means they can't replace gas or nuclear for round-the-clock data center uptime — which is exactly why the gas buildout this story describes is still happening alongside them.
- Google is building a Minnesota data center backed by 1,400 MW of wind, 200 MW of solar, and 300 MW of battery storage from Xcel Energy, announced February 2026.
- Google acquired Intersect Power for $4.75 billion in March 2026 to develop US campuses where solar and wind farms sit directly adjacent to data centers — first phase expected online 2026–2027.
- Microsoft signed an 8-year deal with Qcells for 12 GW of solar; TotalEnergies signed long-term PPAs to deliver 1 GW of solar to Google's Texas data centers.
- Solar and wind currently supply roughly 24% of US data center electricity, but 24/7 uptime requirements mean storage or firm power (gas, nuclear) is still needed to fill gaps when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing.
Room for disagreement
- Critics argue most corporate renewable PPAs are accounting tools — electrons flow to the grid, not directly to the data center — so claims of 'solar-powered' facilities can overstate how much clean energy actually runs the machines on any given hour.
- Hyperscalers say co-location campuses (solar farm next to data center, bypassing the grid) solve the matching problem; skeptics counter that these projects are still early-stage and won't scale fast enough to meet the demand surge this story describes.
AI-generated with web search — may be wrong. Check the linked sources.
