Enlight signs 200 MW solar PPA with Google for Oklahoma data centres
Enlight Renewable Energy has signed a 15-year, fixed-price power purchase agreement (PPA) to supply Google with 200 MWac of solar-generated electricity from its Solstice project in LeFlore County, Oklahoma. The deal — structured as a physical delivery into the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) market — is Enlight's first US commercial-customer PPA and the Israeli-listed renewable developer's first project to reach this stage in the SPP.
The electricity will come from Solstice, a 250 MWdc photovoltaic facility being developed by Clēnera Holdings, Enlight's US subsidiary. Construction is expected to begin in 2028, with commercial operations targeted for 2029. A subsequent phase is planned to add 800 MWh of battery energy storage capacity, though no timeline or financing terms for that expansion were disclosed.
The deal
Adi Leviatan, chief executive of Enlight, said the Google agreement marks a strategic expansion beyond utility offtakers. "By signing this agreement with Google, we are expanding our US customer base beyond utilities to large load commercial customers, including the fast-growing data centre sector," he said, adding that the company views this as "only the beginning of a significant growth opportunity" in the US.
Solstice has cleared a system impact study and is expected to receive full interconnection approval from SPP before the end of 2026, according to Enlight. The project will contribute local and state tax revenues during its operational life, with Clēnera CEO Jared McKee citing hundreds of skilled construction jobs as a near-term community benefit.
Google's Director of Energy and Power, Will Conkling, framed the deal in grid-health terms, noting the company's intent to support a "more robust, affordable, and reliable energy system" in Oklahoma — language consistent with Google's broader 24/7 carbon-free energy strategy and its need to demonstrate additionality as data centre load growth attracts regulatory scrutiny.
Market context
The SPP is one of the fastest-growing power markets in the United States. According to Enlight's release, citing the 2025 Integrated Transmission Planning Assessment Report, peak load in the SPP footprint is projected to increase by nearly 5 GW between 2026 and 2029, while more than 5.7 GW of fossil-generation capacity is expected to retire over the same period. That combination of rising demand and retiring supply creates strong structural incentives for new renewable generation contracts.
Hyperscalers — Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta — have collectively signed hundreds of gigawatts of renewable PPAs globally in recent years as data centre power consumption accelerates, driven by AI workloads. The scale and term length of these deals (often 15–20 years) provide developers such as Enlight and Clēnera with the bankable revenue certainty needed to secure project financing and begin construction. Competition for high-quality shovel-ready sites in SPP and other constrained interconnection queues is intensifying, with developers and utilities alike prioritising projects that have already cleared system impact studies.
From a regulatory perspective, projects in the SPP footprint may benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act's production tax credits and investment tax credits for solar, though Enlight's release did not confirm the specific incentive structure Solstice will utilise. The IRA's domestic content adder and energy community provisions could further improve project economics depending on supply-chain sourcing and the exact location's eligibility criteria — details the company is likely to disclose closer to a financial close announcement.
With interconnection approval anticipated later this year and construction still two years away, the principal near-term milestones for analysts and investors to track are project financing close, confirmation of the battery storage expansion timeline, and any further commercial-customer PPAs that Enlight signals as part of its stated SPP growth strategy.