LG to power Google’s biggest solar hub
LG Energy Solution will supply batteries for Google’s largest solar-and-storage project in Arkansas, underscoring rising AI-driven power demand and North American sourcing.
LG Energy Solution's plant in Holland, Michigan.
LG ENERGY SOLUTION
LG Energy Solution will supply the batteries for the largest solar-and-storage project in Google's global portfolio, a sprawling complex under construction in Arkansas to help feed the surging power demand of AI data centers.
Cypress Creek Energy, a U.S. renewable-energy developer and independent power producer, broke ground Tuesday on the Steel River Energy Center in Wilson, Arkansas, alongside Google, which has agreed to buy the electricity from the project's first two phases. The storage system will run entirely on LG Energy Solution batteries.
The project pairs one of the largest solar arrays in the United States with grid-scale batteries that store daytime solar output and feed it back when demand peaks. Its first two phases will add 1.6 gigawatts of solar generation and 1.9 gigawatt-hours of storage. At full build-out, targeted for 2029, the site will reach 2.5 gigawatts of solar and 2.9 gigawatt-hours of storage, enough to power more than 315,000 Arkansas homes a year.
The companies did not disclose the value of the battery supply, which industry sources estimated Wednesday in the hundreds of billions of won, or hundreds of millions of dollars.
For the storage, LG Energy Solution will provide JF2 DC Link, a lithium iron phosphate battery system it builds in North America. In May, the company signed a data-center battery deal with Michigan's DTE Energy. The Steel River contract adds to a string of large energy-infrastructure wins tied to Big Tech's AI-driven power demand.
Industry observers see LG Energy Solution's early build-out of North American production as the reason it prevailed, as U.S. rules increasingly penalize reliance on China-linked battery supply chains. Cypress Creek and Google both stressed that the project's core components were sourced entirely within North America: the batteries, the solar panels from First Solar and the structural steel from Arkansas.
LG Energy Solution now makes storage batteries at four North American sites: Holland, Michigan; the L-H Battery Company plant in Ohio; Ultium Cells in Tennessee; and NextStar Energy in Canada. Once its Lansing, Michigan, plant begins storage-battery output later this year, the company expects its global storage-battery capacity to top 60 gigawatt-hours by the end of 2026, with more than 50 gigawatt-hours of that in North America.
BY SUK GYEONG-MIN [[email protected]]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
