Google to buy power from Altamont wind farm

One of the oldest wind farms in the United States—the Altamont Pass facility near Livermore, California—will be getting a new lease on life through a 20-year power purchase agreement between the facility’s operator, NextEra Energy Resources (Juno Beach, CA), and search engine giant Google, Inc., which will use the electricity to power its North Bayshore headquarters in Mountain View. As part of the deal, NextEra will replace 770 old turbines at the Altamont Pass facility dating back to the 1980s with 48 new turbines producing twice as much energy. “It’ll be majestic,” Sam Arons, an energy strategist at Google, told the San Jose Mercury News on February 12. “Today there are many small turbines of all different sizes, all different vintages. It’s kind of a hodgepodge out there. Once this project is done, you’ll see a lot of tall, sleek, majestic turbines that will really de-clutter the landscape.” Google is purchasing approximately 50%, or 43 MW, of the power that the refurbished Altamont Pass wind farm will generate, beginning sometime in 2016.