Google just sealed one of the biggest clean energy deals in tech history. The company signed a 1.9-gigawatt renewable power agreement that includes a groundbreaking 100-hour battery system from Form Energy, designed to keep its AI-hungry data centers running around the clock on wind and solar power. The deal marks a turning point in how hyperscalers are solving the reliability problem that's plagued renewable energy for decades.
Google is making a massive bet that iron-air batteries can solve one of AI's thorniest problems: how to run power-hungry data centers on intermittent renewable energy. The company just announced a 1.9-gigawatt clean energy deal that pairs wind and solar farms with Form Energy's revolutionary 100-hour battery storage system, creating what may be the most ambitious attempt yet to power AI infrastructure without fossil fuel backup.
The scale is staggering. At 1.9 gigawatts, this single deal could power nearly 1.5 million homes, and the battery system is designed to store enough energy to keep Google's operations running for more than four days straight when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. That's a game-changer in an industry where lithium-ion batteries typically max out at four to six hours of storage.
Form Energy has been working on its iron-air battery technology for years, but this marks the company's biggest commercial deployment yet. Unlike lithium-ion batteries that rely on expensive materials like cobalt and nickel, Form's batteries use iron - one of the most abundant and cheap materials on Earth. The technology works by converting iron to rust and back again, storing energy in the chemical transformation. It's slower than lithium-ion, but the multi-day storage duration makes it perfect for backing up renewable energy at grid scale.
The timing couldn't be more critical for Google. The company's AI ambitions, from Gemini to enterprise cloud services, are driving data center power consumption through the roof. Traditional approaches to 24/7 clean energy have relied on nuclear power or natural gas peaker plants to fill gaps when renewables dip. But those options are either slow to deploy or undermine carbon-neutral commitments. Long-duration storage offers a third path - one that lets tech giants claim they're running entirely on clean power while maintaining the reliability their services demand.
