Google will buy up to 3 GW of hydroelectric power from Brookfield Renewable, with an initial focus on the PJM Interconnection and Midcontinent Independent System Operator footprints, the companies said Tuesday.
The “hydro framework agreement” will help Google run its data centers and other operations on carbon-free power all the time, according to the companies.
The first 20-year contracts under the agreement are for the output from Brookfield’s Holtwood and Safe Harbor hydro facilities in Pennsylvania, which total about 670 MW, according to the companies. The contracts will generate more than $3 billion in revenue, Brookfield and Google said.
Brookfield is relicensing the Holtwood and Safe Harbor hydro facilities at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Brookfield said the agreement is part of its strategy to deliver dispatchable clean power to the technology sector.
Brookfield’s top four corporate power purchasers are Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google. On May 1, Microsoft said it would buy more than 10.5 GW of clean energy projects from Brookfield Asset Management and its Brookfield Renewable affiliate between 2026 and 2030.
Brookfield Renewable owns about 21 GW of hydro, wind, solar and storage assets worldwide, and its project development pipeline totals about 69 GW, according to the company.
With PJM facing tight supply-demand conditions, partly driven by data center development, Joseph Bowring, the grid operator’s market monitor, has urged FERC to require that data centers use new generating resources to meet their needs instead of relying on existing resources.
