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Dive Brief:

Microsoft is expanding its relationship with solar panel producer Qcells, as the tech company looks to power its data center expansion.
Under the expanded partnership, Microsoft would fund the power needed for its data center operations, and Qcells would develop and build new capacity to deliver power to either Microsoft or the utility serving the communities around new data centers, according to an August 19 press release.
Microsoft is a signatory to the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, agreeing to build, bring or buy new power supply for its energy demands from data center expansion. The company said in its latest sustainability report that data center expansion helped fuel a 25% rise in its 2025 emissions.

Dive Insight:

The partnership between Microsoft and the South Korea-based Qcells dates back to 2023, when Qcells agreed to supply 2.5 gigawatts of solar panels to the tech giant. That agreement and partnership was later expanded to include 12 GW of solar modules in 2024, along with engineering, procurement and construction services over an eight-year period.

The two companies are also exploring virtual power plants to combine “thousands of residential and commercial batteries” in a bid to lower peak energy demand and consumers’ energy bills, according to the release. 

The expanded partnership is designed to help add additional compute capacity for artificial intelligence to the grid without increasing utility costs for the surrounding communities.

“Rather than simply adding electricity demand to the grid, the proposed approach would develop new generation and flexible energy resources alongside Microsoft’s expanding data center footprint, helping support grid reliability while enabling future AI growth,” Qcells said in the release.

For the VPPs, Qcells said it would “prioritize participation from income-qualified households,” in order to ensure the projects have economic benefits for the communities in which they are built. Qcells CEO Andy Park said in the release that the companies are exploring how to “build the energy capacity needed for AI while creating lasting value for the communities that share the grid.”

“As AI transforms the economy, we have an opportunity to rethink how the energy infrastructure supporting it is built,” Park said.

Earlier this year, Microsoft said it would take a “community-first” approach to AI infrastructure, which includes paying more to ensure utility customers don’t have their rates increase, minimizing its water use and replenishing more than it consumes, focusing on local job creation, adding to the tax base and investing in local AI training.

In a filing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday, Microsoft said that current agreements and FERC approval for the company’s data center expansion in Wisconsin would fail to protect utility customers from having to pay for the infrastructure expansion. Microsoft said that the current agreements “contain significant deficiencies … and raise several significant cost-of-service and open access issues.”

The push for companies driving the AI expansion to protect ratepayers and bring their own energy capacity for new infrastructure comes as communities across the country are pushing back against data center expansion. Local pushback and issues with power access saw data center project cancellations spike in 2025, to 25 cancellations from six the year prior.

Over 500 national, regional and local organizations in the U.S. have called on Congress to pass a national data center moratorium due to the energy and water needs of the infrastructure. In July, New York became the first U.S. state to pause the development of hyperscale data centers — or data centers that use 50 megawatts or more of energy — for a year while the state examines their environmental impacts.

Pushback is increasingly bipartisan, with Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott pausing data center construction in the state and calling for an audit of data centers currently in the queue for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas interconnection.