Salt River Project (SRP), NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, the Arizona State Land Department and Babbitt Ranches celebrated the completion of Babbitt Ranch Energy Center, a 161-megawatt (MW) wind project located on Babbitt Ranches property in Coconino County, north of Flagstaff, Arizona.
MORE NEWS: Fortune’s Top 10 Change the World list includes 2 Arizona companies
Babbitt Ranch Energy Center will play an important role in decarbonizing SRP’s energy portfolio while the company works to meet the energy needs of one of the fastest growing areas of the nation. The wind energy generated by the project will complement SRP’s solar resources by providing energy during evening and nighttime hours when solar energy is not available.
Babbitt Ranch Energy Center features 50 wind turbines that will convert energy from the wind into electricity. A subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources built and owns the project and will oversee operations.
“A diversified resource mix is essential to achieving our carbon reduction goals while supporting our customers energy needs with reliable and affordable power,” said Bobby Olsen, Chief Planning, Strategy and Sustainability Officer at SRP. “We value our partnership with NextEra Energy Resources, Google and Babbitt Ranches to bring clean energy benefits to the community.”
Babbitt Ranch Energy Center is poised to generate around $9.5 million in additional tax revenue to the Coconino County area over the facility’s lifespan.
“The Babbitt Ranch Energy Center will generate low-cost, homegrown energy and provide millions of dollars in additional revenue to Coconino County over the life of the project,” said JD Rulien, executive director at NextEra Energy Resources, the world’s largest generator of renewable energy from the wind and sun, as well as a world leader in battery energy storage. “We are pleased to work with SRP, the Arizona State Land Department and the Babbitt Ranches , and being a part of the team that will generate energy for Google’s data center.”
Google is pursuing net-zero emissions across its operations and value chain by 2030, supported by an ambitious goal to run its data centers and office campuses on 24/7 carbon-free energy. The clean energy produced by Babbitt Ranch Energy Center will be fully allocated to Google’s future data center in Mesa, Arizona.
“Google data centers are engines of economic growth, enabling us to deliver results from Search, Google Cloud services, Google Maps directions and much more to our users and customers,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Global Head of Data Center Energy at Google. “Our collaboration with Salt River Project and NextEra will support the energy needs of our future data center, while also contributing to a clean energy future for Arizona and our ambition to run all of our data centers with 24/7 carbon-free energy by the end of the decade.”
Google is also receiving energy from Sonoran Solar Energy Center, a 260 MW solar facility with a 1 gigawatt-hour battery energy storage system located in Buckeye, Arizona and Storey Energy Center, an 88 MW solar and battery energy storage system located in Coolidge, Arizona. These facilities support SRP’s transition to clean energy and are owned and operated by subsidiaries of NextEra Energy Resources.
Babbitt Ranches is one of the longest-running land companies in the West and has been exploring renewable energy viability in Northern Arizona since 2005, such as measuring wind speeds and conducting solar power evaluations.
“It has been an extraordinary journey for Babbitt Ranches as we’ve explored the opportunities for clean earth energy in Northern Arizona for more than two decades,” said President and General Manager Billy Cordasco, on behalf of the Babbitt Ranches Community. “From testing wind speeds and consistency in the early 2000s to studying the golden eagle population through the last 20 years, we are truly honored for the great number of participants including the Arizona Game and Fish Department, Arizona State Land Department, Coconino County, Salt River Project and NextEra Energy Resources, that have made it possible to generate wind power in Northern Arizona. What we are doing here together matters for future generations and the planet and is a great example of how ‘the whole is something greater than the sum of its parts.”
SRP was the first utility in Arizona to add wind power to its energy resource mix and still receives all energy output from the 127 MW Dry Lake Wind Power Project, the first large-scale wind power facility built in the state.
Through its Integrated System Plan, SRP found it will need to at least double the number of generating resources on its power system in the next 10 years to meet increasing energy demand in the Phoenix metropolitan area as it moves forward with the planned retirement of 1,300 MW of coal resources. Nearly 3,000 MW of carbon-free energy resources, including over 1,400 MW of solar, are currently serving SRP customers. Nearly 1,600 MW of battery and pumped hydro storage resources are also supporting the power grid.
