Avangrid Inc. and Portland General Electric have signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for Tower Solar, a new 120 MW AC solar energy project now under construction in Morrow County, Ore., in collaboration with QTS and Meta.
The facility will deliver energy to Portland General Electric’s grid through Green Future Impact (GFI), a voluntary program designed to help large commercial, industrial and municipal customers meet their sustainability and carbon reduction goals through the development of new clean energy facilities.
Subscribers to PGE’s GFI program enroll in a bundled renewable energy product and receive the renewable energy certificates (RECs) associated with the energy generated from the new facility. PGE’s subscription pricing is designed to avoid cost shifting to non-participating customers.
Under PGE’s GFI program, QTS, a data center solutions provider, is developing a data center campus to support Meta’s operations in the region that will be supported by energy from Tower Solar, helping to meet Meta’s sustainability and 100% renewable energy goals.
“The Green Future Impact program allows PGE to partner with our largest customers like QTS to meet their ambitious sustainability goals through local clean energy,” says PGE’s Brett Greene. “Through GFI, our largest customers can fund the development of the renewable resources they need while supporting green jobs and revenue for Oregon communities.”
Tower Solar will be located just west of Boardman and located on about 900 acres of industrially zoned land owned by the Port of Morrow near the Boardman Airport. The project will utilize more than 200,000 solar panels.
At the peak of construction, Avangrid expects Tower Solar to create more than 200 jobs, the vast majority of which will be sourced from the region. Tower Solar is expected to pay about $20 million in combined PILOTs (payment in lieu of taxes) and property taxes.
Avangrid is the leading supplier of renewable energy to PGE’s Green Future Impact program, including from Pachwáywit Fields, Oregon’s largest operating solar facility, and the Daybreak and Bakeoven solar farms, which are currently under construction.
Together with Tower Solar, the current combined capacity of the Green Future Impact program facilities will be 482 MW AC.
Tower Solar will become Avangrid’s sixth solar facility in Oregon once construction is complete in 2026.
The post Oregon Utility Signs on to Back 120 MW Solar Development appeared first on Solar Industry.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
CIP Buys Ørsted EU Onshore Wind
Allen covers CIP’s €1.44 billion buyout of Ørsted’s European onshore wind, the new Perigus Energy name, and Vestas paying €506 million for its stake in the firm.
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In Denmark, there is an old expression. “What goes around comes around.” The founders of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners — known in the industry simply as CIP — know exactly what that means.
Back in 2012, four executives were fired from DONG Energy, the Danish energy giant that would later rebrand itself as Ørsted. Their offense? Their paychecks were considered too large. So large that DONG Energy’s own CEO was forced out as well. Four men shown the door were. A year later, a woman joined them from that same company. The Danish press had a name for these five. They called them “the golden birds.”
With six billion Danish krone from the pension fund PensionDanmark, they launched what is now one of the world’s largest clean energy fund managers.
In 2020, turbine maker Vestas purchased a 25 percent stake in CIP. The deal included a performance-based earn-out arrangement. This week, the books revealed the size of that windfall.
The five partners have now collected a combined 1.8 billion Danish krone — roughly 240 million euros. Vestas expects to make one final payment of 71 million euros this year. Including interest, Vestas will have paid 506 million euros for its stake in CIP. Not a bad return for a group of people who were shown the door.
And. This week, CIP completed its acquisition of Ørsted’s European onshore wind business for 1.44 billion euros. They renamed it Perigus Energy. The new company holds 826 megawatts of wind and solar capacity, operating in Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
Let that circle close. The executives fired from DONG Energy — the company that became Ørsted — just bought Ørsted’s business.
Meanwhile, CIP’s annual report for 2025 tells the story of a company in transition. Profit for the year came in at 561 million Danish krone, down from 683 million the year before. The employee count fell by nearly a fifth, to 441 people. And yet, their CI Five fund closed this year at 12.3 billion euros — the largest greenfield renewable infrastructure fund ever raised. Looking ahead, CIP expects profit of 600 to 800 million Danish krone in 2026 as new fund closings take shape.
So the picture this week is this. The men and women once considered overpaid, at a company that no longer carries the same name, have built the world’s largest greenfield renewable energy fund. And they now own a piece of the legacy that fired them.
The golden birds are still flying.
And that is the wind energy news for the fourth of May, 2026. Join us for more on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Here’s Lucy Biggers, social media powerhouse, explaining how solar and wind energy actually aren’t free, because they require materials that need to be mined from the Earth.
Yes, Lucy. I think most of us already knew that.
It’s hard for me to understand how a person with zero training in science has any relevance to what climate scientists are telling us. If I want a good recipe for carrot soup, I don’t ask a baseball coach or an auto mechanic.
They call this woman an “influencer.” What type of idiot does she influence?
Yes, part of this is stupidity. But a larger part is that people who still support Trump at this point are desperate to believe whatever comes out of his mouth, regardless of how nonsensical it may be.
I wish my mother were still here so I could see where she would stand. She was extremely well-educated, and a voracious reader, but somehow remained a Fox News viewer until the end. I just wonder if the last 15 months may have turned her around.
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