Nevada Utility and Google Strike Innovative Green Accord

Grid Talk

NV Energy and Google have pioneered new utility regulatory policy to help the tech company’s move to power its data center with renewable and green energy.

In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg interviews Doug Cannon, President and CEO of NV Energy.

Google executives say the agreement could be a template for similar pacts with utilities around the country. Higher revenues from new fee structures will be used to fund new geothermal generation resources in Nevada.

“We really quickly recognized is we couldn’t just rely on that tariff book anymore and we had, if we were going to stay relevant in the business and we were going to be a value-add energy provider for our customers we had to change our way of business.”

Utilities that don’t adapt to the green energy push of the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft may be headed to challenging times.

“We’re going to see some utilities bypassed.”

“What this product, what we’re focused on is real time green generation being injected into the NV Energy grid at the same time as Google was utilizing energy… there’s absolutely a real time match on that energy.”

Doug Cannon leads NV Energy’s daily operations and oversees the company’s commitment to deliver low-cost energy, expand its renewable energy portfolio and maintain industry-leading reliability for its customers. He has been with NV Energy since 2013.

NV Energy delivers electricity to nearly 1.3 million customers and nearly 50 million tourists annually throughout its nearly 46,000-mile service territory in the state of Nevada.

Cannon earned a juris doctor from the University of Colorado School of Law and a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado. He holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental geoscience from Weber State University.