Community Solar

5 years, 150 projects, 500 MWac: Microsoft and Pivot go big on community solar

5 years, 150 projects, 500 MWac: Microsoft and Pivot go big on community solar
(Courtesy: Pivot Energy)

Today renewable energy provider and independent power producer Pivot Energy announced an ambitious five-year framework agreement with Microsoft to develop up to 500 megawatts (MWac) of community-scale solar energy projects across the United States between 2025 and 2029.

The agreement will enable Pivot to develop approximately 150 U.S. solar projects in roughly 100 communities across 20 states, including Colorado, Maryland, Illinois, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Microsoft will purchase the project Renewable Energy Credits for a 20-year term, and the first projects are expected to come online before the end of this year.

“An economy fueled by clean, distributed energy can do more than provide power at low cost; it drives growth and success in communities across the nation,” said Tom Hunt, CEO of Pivot Energy. “This collaboration between Pivot Energy and Microsoft exemplifies the power and impact that distributed generation can have.”

Pivot will prioritize community-centric initiatives like increasing the diversity of its subcontractors, partnering with workforce development organizations and subcontractors to train and hire local diverse talent, partnering with Sustain Our Future Foundation to invest in equitable community initiatives, and increasing the energy bill savings of the community solar projects directed to low-income subscribers.

“We believe the clean energy transition can and should benefit communities across the United States that have been historically excluded from economic opportunity,” asserted Adrian Anderson, GM of renewables, carbon-free energy, and CDR at Microsoft. “Through our work with Pivot Energy and with its commitments to driving community impact, this collaboration helps to build more inclusive, local economic growth across 100 communities while addressing the sustainability needs and opportunities within those communities.”

This represents Pivot’s largest Renewable Energy Credit (REC) agreement and most significant community impact collaboration thus far; it’s also Microsoft’s first major foray into distributed generation. The tech behemoth has been feverishly active in developing a broad variety of utility-scale renewable generation to support its operations. In May of this year, Microsoft inked two 15-year Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with developer RWE for two new onshore wind farms in Texas with a combined capacity of 446 MW. 

Earlier in the same month, Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management and Microsoft announced the signing of a global renewable energy framework outlining plans to develop more than 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity, an agreement nearly eight times larger than the biggest single corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) previously signed. Having contracted almost one GW of renewable capacity to date outside of the agreement, the agreement builds on the existing collaboration, the companies said. The agreement will not only focus on wind and solar but also “new or impactful carbon-free energy generation technologies,” which were not expanded upon by the companies. According to the Financial Times, which first broke the news, the new capacity could cost an estimated $10 billion.