Summary: In February 2026, Google and Ormat signed a power purchase agreement for up to 150 MW of new Nevada geothermal capacity, routed through NV Energy’s Clean Transition Tariff to Google data centers. Projects enter service between 2028 and 2030, with the term extending 15 years after the final project. The article says it is the first transaction since Nevada regulators approved the tariff.
February 2026 produced one of the larger clean-power signings of the AI build-out: Google and geothermal developer Ormat Technologies put pen to paper on a power purchase agreement covering up to 150 MW of new capacity. The electricity travels through the Clean Transition Tariff, the rate vehicle of Nevada utility NV Energy, on its way to Google’s data centers in the state. Rather than a single plant, the capacity takes the form of a portfolio developed in stages, with projects entering service between 2028 and 2030. Nevada regulators approved the tariff model in mid-2025; this is the first deal signed under it since, and among the biggest geothermal procurements yet made in the name of AI electricity demand.
The setup is straightforward. AI training and inference keep pushing data center load past what wind and solar can supply around the clock, and geothermal is one of the few clean sources able to hold baseload duty — the machines simply keep running, regardless of weather or daylight. Once each kilowatt of compute is worth enough, buying firm clean power stops being a public-relations move and becomes an engineering decision.
Inside the 150MW Agreement
Three structural elements define it:
- Capacity: up to 150 MW, assembled from a series of new geothermal projects across Nevada rather than from one plant
- Routing: Ormat sells to NV Energy, not to Google directly; the utility then dedicates that output to Google’s data centers
- Term: the clock starts at the first project’s commercial operation and runs until 15 years after the final project’s, with Nevada PUC approval anticipated in the second half of 2026
Briana Kobor, Google’s Head of Energy Market Innovation, presented the deal as “a proven, scalable model for large customers to partner with utilities and technology providers.” Ormat CEO Doron Blachar skipped the diplomacy: “AI is fundamentally increasing electricity demand across the technology sector,” he said, and geothermal “is uniquely positioned to deliver the reliable, carbon-free power required to support that growth.”
The Logic of the Clean Transition Tariff
Google and NV Energy (a Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary) jointly put the CTT forward in 2024 to untangle a regulatory knot: early-stage technologies — geothermal, advanced nuclear, long-duration storage — struggle to recover their costs under standard tariffs, and ordinary ratepayers ought not to carry that development risk. The fix: large customers pay the premium themselves and tie the new capacity to their own load, so the risk and the reward both stay with the volunteers.
This agreement is the framework’s first transaction since Nevada regulators approved it in summer 2025. The partner named in the original pitch was enhanced-geothermal startup Fervo (which has since filed for a public listing); this time the conventional incumbent, Ormat, is out front — evidence that the framework can carry more than one technology route.
The Case for Geothermal
Google’s long-term goal is 24/7 carbon-free energy: every kilowatt-hour, in every hour, matched by clean generation. Wind and solar cannot manage that alone, and the shortfall is exactly what clean firm power exists to fill. Geothermal qualifies on all counts — it generates continuously, takes up little land, and Nevada sits on some of the best geothermal resource in the United States. For a data center, 150 MW of steady clean power is more than an ESG line item; it locks supply certainty into the cost structure years in advance.
There is a technical subplot as well. Nothing in the announcement says whether the new projects will rely on conventional or next-generation methods. Ormat licensed Sage Geosystems’ next-gen geothermal technology in August 2025, and Sage’s first commercial plant is under construction at an existing Ormat site — this deal could end up as the vehicle that scales that technology.
Ormat’s Turn Toward Data Center Demand
For Ormat, the agreement signals a deliberate change of course. Only in January 2026 had it signed what was effectively its first PPA with a large-load customer: a 20-year contract with data center operator Switch for roughly 13 MW from the existing Salt Wells plant in western Nevada, plus an option to add about 7 MW of solar for auxiliary power. The Google deal is more than ten times that size, and every megawatt comes from entirely new development. In the same week, Meta and NVIDIA announced their million-GPU compute pact (see our AI weekly roundup) — the electricity bill of the compute race is redrawing who the power industry sells to.
What Developers and Product Teams Should Take From This
Three observations. First, compute cost is morphing into energy cost: a growing slice of inference pricing behaves like power procurement, and siting plus tariff structure will surface directly in cloud and API prices. Second, access to clean firm power is becoming a real data center differentiator — particularly relevant for agent workloads with high availability requirements. Third, the CTT playbook of large customers paying a premium to derisk early technology has now proven replicable, giving energy-tech startups a clear exit path: sell first to the grid’s biggest power buyers.