Google agrees to purchase 100% of power from largest solar-plus-storage project in U.S.

Google has agreed to buy all the initial power from a huge new solar-and-battery project in Arkansas, called the Steel River Energy Center. Built by Cypress Creek Energy, the project starts at 1.6 gigawatts of solar power paired with 2 gigawatt-hours of battery storage, enough to supply electricity equal to about 315,000 homes a year. It's designed to eventually grow to 2.5 gigawatts of solar and 2.9 gigawatt-hours of storage, making it the largest project of its kind in the country.

Google isn't drawing power directly from this plant. Instead, it signed what's called a virtual power purchase agreement, meaning it pays a fixed price for the clean electricity the project generates, which helps offset the emissions from the regular grid power its data centers use elsewhere. Google says the arrangement still benefits everyday electricity customers in Arkansas, since the plant feeds into the shared grid. The deal reflects a broader scramble among tech companies to lock in renewable energy as their power use grows sharply, particularly from artificial intelligence. Nationally, more than half of the electricity powering data centers still comes from fossil fuels.

The project also leans on U.S.-made equipment: solar panels from First Solar, steel sourced in Arkansas, and batteries built at an LG plant in Phoenix. This matters because federal rules now limit tax credits for equipment tied to certain foreign suppliers, and China still dominates global solar and battery manufacturing. For homeowners, this isn't a program you can access directly, but it shows how much new solar and storage capacity is being built to meet rising electricity demand nationwide.