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Arkansas to build 600 MW solar project for Google’s $4B data center - Entergy Arkansas and Google are teaming up on Project Pyramid — a 600 MW solar farm with 350 MW of battery storage to power Google’s new $4 billion data center in West Memphis. The project boosts Arkansas’s solar capacity by nearly 20% and signals how clean energy is becoming essential infrastructure for the AI-driven economy.
Good News Thursday!
Big news out of Arkansas — clean energy and cloud computing are joining forces.
Entergy Arkansas just got the green light for Project Pyramid, a 600 MW solar farm paired with 350 MW of battery storage to power Google’s new $4 billion data center campus in West Memphis. It’s the first Google data center in the state — and one of the biggest clean energy projects ever approved in Arkansas.
The scale is staggering: five data centers, offices, and nearly 1,200 acres of development. The site will include new transmission lines and local programs to boost grid resilience. When complete, it’ll add 600 MW to Arkansas’s 3,245 MW of existing solar — nearly a 20% jump in statewide capacity.
Google plans to go beyond building solar. It’s launching demand-response programs with Entergy, cutting power use during peak hours by shifting machine-learning workloads — an emerging strategy to ease grid stress while keeping AI operations running efficiently.
The timing matters. U.S. electricity demand from AI and cloud computing is set to triple by 2030, climbing from 200 to 600 terawatt-hours — about 12% of total U.S. power use. Data centers already lead corporate clean energy deals, accounting for nearly 60% of all contracts in 2024.
For Arkansas, this marks a shift. The state has flown under the radar as a data center hub, but strong solar growth and affordable land are putting it on the map. It now ranks 5th in solar per capita and 16th in total capacity, with momentum building fast.
Projects like this highlight the crossroads between energy and innovation. Clean power isn’t just a climate play anymore — it’s a business necessity for companies betting big on AI.
This is what the next chapter of American infrastructure looks like: Solar, storage, and smarter grids built to power the digital economy.
What do you think — are partnerships like this the model for balancing the AI boom with sustainable growth?