The AP reported on Friday that Google is considering building a data center in Minnesota with power coming from wind farms, according to information in regulatory filings by Xcel Energy. The filings (here and here) include, among other things, redacted copies of a Retail Electric Service Agreement, a Competitive Rate Rider Agreement; and an Interconnection Agreement for Retail Electric Service at Transmission Voltage entered into by Northern States Power Company (Xcel) with Honeycrisp Power LLC, an entity identified as an affiliate of Google.
It’s a nice touch to name the Google affiliate after an apple developed at the University of Minnesota, since the data center would be in Minnesota. Interestingly, a statement a few months ago in a Bloomberg article, “The Curse of the Honeycrisp Apple,” that the Honeycrisp apple “succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, . . . [but] became a nightmare for some producers, forcing small Northeastern growers to compete with their massive, climatically advantaged counterparts on the West Coast,” almost sounds like something that could apply to search engines—not just apple growers.