Casa dos Ventos widens portfolio for hyperscalers, datacenters supply

Brazilian renewable energy group Casa dos Ventos is stepping up its strategy to capture supply business opportunities with large cloud, data providers and internet companies.

The company recently announced a long-term contract for the supply of wind energy to Brazil-based Odata, which is owned by US group Aligned Data Centers. 

The deal was a direct investment, or self-supply model, through which Odata acquired a stake in the Babilônia Sul wind complex (360MW) in Várzea Nova, Bahia state.

Now, Casa dos Ventos is negotiating a range of similar deals with other major players in the segment, such as Scala and Ascenty, João Caldas, head of analytics, new technologies and innovation at Casa dos Ventos, told BNamericas.

The expectation is that the datacenter sector will be a main demand driver and generate new contracts for the group going forward.

“We’re by far the best positioned player in this sector. We have the largest portfolio available for new hires and the only company with the capacity to deliver a large volume of energy, with a balanced mix, in a relatively short space of time,” said Caldas, who spoke to BNamericas on the sidelines of the DCD Connect datacenters event in São Paulo.

Casa dos Ventos projects 4.2GW in capacity being operational by next year, part of which could be absorbed by datacenter companies that demand clean and abundant energy for their operations.

For the coming years, Casa dos Ventos expects to reach a portfolio of 6.9GW of wind and solar energy available.

Tivit

One of Casa dos Ventos' first self-production contracts in the sector was with Tivit, which recently spun off its datacenter operation and named it Takoda.

This contract started being negotiated prior to the pandemic and took effect in October 2021. Currently, according to Caldas, Casa dos Ventos supplies 100% of Takoda's operational demand.

Estimates are that the deal helped avoid over 15,000t in annual CO2 emissions.

The volume demanded by Takoda is smaller compared to large self-supply agreements, such as those with Odata and others, in negotiation or already closed and not yet made public, with other large companies in the sector.

Yet, according to Caldas, it corresponds to more than 100MW for Takoda.

The executive said that Brazil is a promising energy market for datacenters due to its open energy segment, competitive environment, reasonable regulatory framework, availability of capital, well-established local industry and available incentives.

He also mentioned the availability and redundancy of the grid as advantages, and said that, despite recent curtailments, the mix of sources allows wind seasonality to complement hydroelectric supply and biomass to complement solar, among others.

"The prospects are very good for the segment. We are very upbeat about it."

Datacenter investment

In a separate push, Casa dos Ventos plans to develop a datacenter, venturing more directly into the commissioning of infrastructure to house data processors and servers.

The project is expected to be located in the industrial free trade zone of Pecém, in Ceará state, an industrial hub where Casa dos Ventos also develops a green hydrogen initiative.

Not many details are available yet. BNamericas has learned from market sources that the company's idea is to make the datacenter build-to-suit and for a single tenant. In other words, it will be built for one client, possibly a multinational cloud and AI company, but talks are still ongoing and, for now, nothing is fully formalized. 

There are negotiations with several companies, although the plan is to close the deal with just one player.

BNamericas also learned that Casa dos Ventos began working on the documentation and licensing to implement the project in Pecém.

Investment exceeds 50bn reais (US$8.72bn), although the bulk is expected to be invested by the client, according to a market source.