RWE recently announced a virtual power purchase agreement with Oracle for 433 megawatts. The agreement provides power from RWE’s existing Panther Creek I, II and III wind farms in West Texas located in Sterling, Howard and Glasscock counties.
With a virtual PPA contract, the corporate buyer does not own and is not responsible for the physical electrons generated by the project, energy group RMI notes.
RWE’s VPPA is part of a broader portfolio of power investments announced by Oracle, which collectively represents more than 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity supporting the Texas grid.
“Oracle is committed to developing data centers responsibly by investing in renewable energy, strengthening the local power grid and helping ensure that electric bills and grid stability are not impacted,” said Julia Robin, Head of Infrastructure Planning and Sourcing for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Our work with RWE advances our goal of matching 100 percent of our AI data center electricity use with carbon-free electricity by 2035 while supporting a more reliable, resilient, and affordable energy system for the State of Texas.”
Panther Creek I and II were repowered in the third quarter of 2019. Panther Creek III was repowered in 2021.
