Microsoft, GE in Wind Power Agreement

Microsoft signed an agreement with GE on Monday to purchase every last bit of the wind energy from GE’s brand-new 37-megawatt Tullahennel wind farm located in County Kerry, Ireland, for the next 15 years. It means Microsoft will be using a clean energy source to power at least some of its cloud data centers in Ireland. That will likely result in a lower energy bill for Microsoft, while reducing the pollution related to running cloud services. But this could have an impact beyond the data centers, as Microsoft and GE are working on a battery technology that captures excess energy from each wind turbine. If there is excess capacity captured by this method, Microsoft and GE could give it back to the Irish energy grid. In recent years, as the biggest companies from Apple to Facebook to Google to Microsoft have built new data centers, they have built them with energy efficiency in mind.