Microsoft Corp. plans to buy a significant amount of the energy produced from a planned solar power project in Spotsylvania County, which is expected to be the largest solar farm in Virginia and one of the largest on the East Coast.
The Seattle-based software company is expected to announce Thursday morning its plans to buy 315 megawatts of power — more than half of the energy expected to be generated from the 500 megawatt solar development called Pleinmont. The planned development would include more than 750,000 solar panels on a 3,500-acre site in rural, western Spotsylvania.
The development is being planned by Sustainable Power Group LLC, or sPower, a Salt Lake City-based company, which in 2017 was acquired as a joint venture of Arlington-based power company AES Corp. and Canada-based investment fund AIMCo.
“This is really important to Microsoft, and we think it is really important to Virginia for several reasons,” said Michelle Patron, director of sustainability policy for Microsoft. “This is going to be the largest corporate purchase of solar power ever in the United States.”
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Microsoft plans to use the energy to power its data centers in Virginia. “We think this puts Virginia on the map for clean energy,” Patron said.
The solar farm would be built in phases, and sPower wants to start construction on the facility in August with operations starting late in 2019.
In November, sPower filed an application with the State Corporation Commission for certificates of public convenience and necessity to build and operate the facility. The SCC has scheduled a public hearing for 10 a.m. May 23 at the SCC’s Tyler building in downtown Richmond, and the state agency is taking written public comments until May 16, either by letter or on the SCC’s website.
Once completed, it would be the fifth largest solar site in the country, according to Microsoft, which is already buying solar power in Virginia. In 2016, the company agreed to buy power from a 20-megawatt solar farm developed by Richmond-based Dominion Energy in Fauquier County.
In a statement, Ryan Creamer, the chief executive officer of sPower, called Microsoft’s commitment a “game-changer for this project and for other buyers.”
“Their early commitment helped ensure that the project continued to move forward and come to fruition at a time of regulatory uncertainty,” he said.
With recent deals, Microsoft said it has met its target to power at least 50 percent of its data centers with clean energy by 2018, and the company wants to achieve 60 percent clean energy by early 2020.
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