The new contracts take Microsoft’s total investment in wind energy projects in the US to over 500MW.
Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith said: “Microsoft is committed to building a responsible cloud, and these agreements represent progress toward our goal of improving the energy mix at our datacenters.”
The technology giant has signed a contract with insurance firm Allianz Risk Transfer (ART) to acquire energy from a new 178MW Bloom Wind project in Kansas.
The deal is aimed at fixing Microsoft’s long-term energy costs.
The Bloom Wind project uses a novel structure developed by ART and designed to offset high upfront costs associated with the large-scale wind projects.
Microsoft said that it is the first buyer to take part in the structure, which is expected to bring clean energy projects online at a faster pace.
The company has also signed an agreement with Black Hills to buy 59MW of renewable energy certificates from the Happy Jack and Silver Sage wind projects.
The projects are located adjacent to Microsoft’s Cheyenne, Wyoming, datacenter.
The combined output of the Bloom and Happy Jack/Silver Sage projects will generate enough energy to meet the annual power consumed at the datacenter, according to the company.
Microsoft cloud infrastructure strategy and architecture general manager said: “The team worked closely with ART to come up with a completely new model to enable faster adoption of renewables.
“Likewise, the tight engagement with Black Hills created the opportunity for Microsoft’s datacenter to become an asset for the local grid, maintaining reliability and reducing costs for ratepayers.”
Earlier, the company signed agreements to purchase 175MW of energy from Pilot Hill wind project in Illinois and 110MW from Keechi wind project in Texas.
Currently, 44% of the power used by Microsoft’s datacenters is generated by wind, solar and hydropower sources.
Image: Microsoft’s datacenter in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Photo courtesy of Microsoft.
