Doug Cannon, NV Energy, discusses how new utility regulatory policy can help Google power its data center.
August 16, 2024
minute read time
“I hope that it causes a sea change.”
Doug Cannon, President and CEO of NV Energy
NV Energy and Google have pioneered new utility regulatory policy to help the tech company move to power its data center with renewable and green energy close to around the clock, according to Doug Cannon, president of NV Energy.
Google executives say the deal could well be a template for similar pacts with utilities around the country. Higher revenues from the new planned regulatory tariffs will be used to fund new geothermal generation resources in Nevada.
“We see our customers today being very interested in a different type of product than a utility has historically offered,” Cannon told the U.S. Department of Energy Grid Talk podcast.
“We really quickly recognized is we couldn’t just rely on that tariff book anymore and we had, if we were going to stay relevant in the business and we were going to be a valueadd energy provider for our customers we had to change our way of business,” Cannon said.
Utilities that don’t adapt to the green energy push of the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft may be headed to challenging times.
“We’re going to see some utilities bypassed,” Cannon said.
“What this product, what we’re focused on is real time green generation being injected into the NV Energy grid at the same time as Google was utilizing energy… there’s absolutely a real time match on that energy,” he said.
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