MANY MINDEDTesla contracts a terawatt-hour a year from an Arizona solar-and-battery plant
ContourGlobal announced on July 29, 2026, that it signed a long-term power purchase agreement with Tesla for Project Sterling, a hybrid solar-plus-storage plant in Arizona. The PPA covers roughly 1 terawatt-hour, or 1,000 GWh, per year, about 90% of the project's expected annual output. It is described as one of the largest solar-plus-storage corporate PPAs from a single plant in the US.
Project Sterling combines 509 MWp of solar PV with 360 MW/1.4 GWh of battery storage, and is expected to generate more than 1.1 TWh a year. It sits in Arizona's WAPA region with firm transmission into California's CAISO market and will be pseudo-tied to serve Tesla. ContourGlobal acquired the project in development in December 2024; off-site construction and equipment procurement began in 2025, with on-site groundbreaking planned for 2026 and commercial operation targeted for 2028. The PPA bundles electricity with renewable energy credits.
For abundance, the deal shows large, dependable clean supply being locked in for compute-heavy demand. Pairing solar with storage lets a single plant deliver firm, contracted power rather than intermittent output, which is what makes a terawatt-hour-a-year commitment credible. Cheaper contracted clean power for data centers eases pressure to build new fossil capacity.
The caveats are timing. This is still a construction-stage project with operations targeted for 2028, and the announcement originates from a press release. Watch whether groundbreaking and the delivery schedule hold.
Source: CleanTechnica