The Information's TITV
00:39:33 · Amanda Peterson Corio, Stephanie Palazzolo
[00:39:33] S7: I... At at this moment, we're continuing to build out and, as you mentioned, having to be creative in how do we access more more capacity to meet ever growing demand. And that looks like building on new structures. So we think not only about how do we build and interconnect to the grid. You see a lot of what's called colocation of power, so building power faster, so you don't actually have to wait on transmission being built to to build it next to the data center. But there's also a lot of solutions that we're opening up to meet demand. We recently announced a partnership with Voltus where we're going to do over a gigawatt of what's called, virtual power plants or demand response, where the problem on on meeting power requirements isn't necessarily around the clock. It's just in a few hours of the year when everybody turns on their air conditioner or everybody's using the grid at the same time. So actually getting creative and working with partners to figure out how can we reduce loads on the grids just during a few hours of the year can actually open up that capacity so it's no longer a bottleneck for us on the grid. [00:40:38] S0: Mhmm. And for that deal specifically, that means paying these homes and businesses Right. To stop using electricity for some of these hours of super high demand.
00:40:38 · Stephanie Palazzolo, Amanda Peterson Corio
[00:40:38] S0: Mhmm. And for that deal specifically, that means paying these homes and businesses Right. To stop using electricity for some of these hours of super high demand. [00:40:47] S7: Yeah. So, it's us actually paying as another customer on the grid to say, hey. How can we have flexibility? It could look like demand response. It could look like switching to a battery at a house or a battery somewhere on the system, that makes more sense. So it's the... In aggregate, there's a lot of efficiencies that we can still realize on our grid to meet the capacity needs. [00:41:08] S0: Mhmm. And what are some other, you know, interesting new types of deal structures that you guys could con... You know, could consider moving forward, like the the Voltus deal that we were just talking about?
00:41:18 · Amanda Peterson Corio
[00:41:18] S7: Yeah. I think we're looking at, a lot of interesting deal structures. We think about, it's a... I've often said it's an all of the above solution. There's not one solution that makes sense or doesn't make sense. So some of those structures may look like, again, building a microgrid closer to the data center. So having, solar, wind, storage, grid connected assets, or geothermal, that has a more around the clock profile, that's that's one asset. And then thinking over time, how do we better integrate the full stack through our data centers to the power supply to optimize that more firmly? Other structures we're looking at, do look more like these virtual power plants where it's like, how can we actually still connect to the grid but actually give distributed batteries to the communities around us or put solar on roofs to help them reduce their energy burden to continue to, have affordable power, but also is a better system and grid resource on the grid. We've also built a lot of structures with our utility partners. So in a lot of states in The US, you can't just go build a power plant next to your data center. You actually have to work, through your regulated utility to buy power. And one of the challenges that that they're having is just the scale and the speed and the and the amount of capital required to meet our demands. So we're innovating with them to say, how can we, commit to today to pay, upfront and commit to paying over fifteen, twenty years, whatever the term is, no matter what. We may not draw an electron from the grid, but we will commit to paying the capital today to make sure the infrastructure is there in the system to be able to service. And that may sound obvious now, but it's a structure that wasn't in place before. And now through our work, working with these utility and the grids have figured out how to get that approved in over nine states in The US, and that's continuing to grow.
00:43:11 · Stephanie Palazzolo
[00:43:11] S0: Mhmm. And, you know, you mentioned geothermal, solar. I know that you recently, you know, announced this major nuclear agreement with Constellation. Talk to me about how Google's thinking about that, you know, source of energy moving moving forward.
00:43:25 · Amanda Peterson Corio
[00:43:25] S7: Yeah. I think, we continue to be committed to decarbonizing our electricity footprint. And there are just not enough technologies at scale, that can provide power in every hour of the day. So you see us showing up in a lot of places to help plant the seeds now to make sure that that power can grow and scale over time. You mentioned Constellation. We partnered with Constellation because they have a number of nuclear plants across their footprint in what's called PJM, is the largest power grid on the Eastern Seaboard. And by working with them to invest the capital, they can actually build and invest in their nuclear plants to get greater efficiency, something called up rates. And these up rates across the system allows us to get clean, firm power, in, again, a distributed way, which really helps the backbone of the system in the grid. We also are investing in the technologies that are not yet operating today. So whether that's Kairos, which is a small modular reactor, or Fervo, we started partnering them back in 2021 with a small little demo project. Now we're doing larger and larger projects. And these are technologies in the case of Fervo. Geothermal has been around for a long time, and we actually have the workforce, in the oil and gas industry who had... Knows how to do this this drilling to be able to access geothermal. So leveraging that and using these advanced drilling techniques, we can actually build a lot more clean geothermal in places across The US, that will come online at the end of this decade or beginning of next decade to bring a more diverse and more options, for power supply to the space.
00:45:04 · Stephanie Palazzolo
[00:45:04] S0: And, you know, we we did talk a bit about some things that Google can can do to make sure that, we don't see this huge spike in electricity prices by, know, paying homes and businesses, for instance, to stop using power during peak peak times. But I think there very much is still this concern from consumers and just everyday people that they're gonna see electricity prices spike as there's just so much demand on the grid. I mean, how do you kind of respond to those concerns? And how worried do people need to be that they might see their prices go up in the upcoming years?