Google announced today that it has purchased two wind farms in North Dakota. Their description of the purchase begins this way:
Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.
I'm hoping the company doesn't think its key role in accelerating alternative energy really lies in owning generating assets -- whether utility scale or otherwise. This strategy would be a waste of shareholder money, but far more importantly would entail a huge opportunity cost for the rest of us in their not focusing on what the firm is absolutely superb at: integrating massively disparate information sources to create powerful new knowledge sets. Where Google can add the most value, and other players fully capable of financing a wind farm cannot, is in energy IT.
My hope is that the next part of their release is the real driver behind the deal:
We’re excited about this first project investment because it uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid. The turbines can continuously adjust the individual blade pitch angles to achieve optimal efficiency and use larger blades with 15 percent more swept area than earlier generations, allowing capture of even more wind energy for each turbine. The control systems for these wind farms are also advanced and dynamic, allowing for remote 24/7 monitoring and operation to ensure maximum turbine up-time and power production.
Purchase advanced controls for wind; learn about them and make incremental improvements; and figure out how to deploy these strategies in real time across networks of turbines to boost turbine efficiency, load matching, power firming, and value to market. Expand lessons in wind power optimization to other decentralized energy resources outside of the wind sector; and as a value-added service to energy assets Google does not own (but on which it can collect a share of the incremental value created). If this is their planned path, the purchase seems a great step forward, and at $39 million, a bargain to boot.
