Gamers Power Texas Solar: 110-MW Project Secures Financing via Virtual PPA

Dive Brief:

• Players of popular video games such as NBA 2K26 and PGA Tour 2K25 are providing part of the offtake for a 110-megawatt standalone solar project that recently entered commercial operation in Hill County, Texas, according to a July 30 release from the two companies behind the arrangement.
• The voluntary, subscription-based offering enabled thousands of individual gamers to support a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) for capacity at Mitsui & Co.'s ThreeW solar project, located south of Dallas. Ever.green and SuperPower said the facility is expected to generate 280,000 megawatt-hours of energy annually.
• This unusual structure underscores the potential for VPPA adoption beyond the hyperscalers, utilities, and large corporations that currently dominate the market, said Cris Eugster, founder and CEO of Ever.green, a Seattle-based renewable energy marketplace that facilitated the transaction, in an interview with Utility Dive.

Dive Insight:

SuperPower, the California-based company that developed the subscription offering and claims the offtake, says that 10 MW of solar can offset about 125 million hours of gaming each year. Modern gaming consoles draw significant power from users' homes, and network-based games add to electricity demand from cloud data centers and other infrastructure.

"There's a lot of gamers out there, millions of them, and it's pretty energy intensive," Eugster said. "And it's a segment people don't really think about."

Eugster, a former Texas utility executive, said Ever.green believes the ThreeW VPPA is "one of" the first arrangements of its kind, but the structure itself is not revolutionary. While large, power-hungry companies like Microsoft and Meta have the resources to be sole VPPA offtakers for hundreds of megawatts of capacity at a time, most companies don't need that much power, he noted.

Ever.green facilitates "fractionalized" transactions for smaller amounts of energy capacity or renewable energy certificates (RECs), which Eugster called the company's "main offering."

A VPPA is a type of contract for difference that shifts energy price exposure from the project owner (seller) to the offtaker (buyer). In volatile wholesale energy markets like the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), VPPAs can offset development costs and reduce market risk by providing predictable contracted revenue upfront, Eugster explained. RECs also provide contracted revenue to the seller without shifting energy risk to the buyer.

Upfront contracted revenue also gives developers flexibility to shape projects in fast-changing energy markets, Eugster said. ERCOT is a prime example: Texas has nearly 30 gigawatt-hours and counting of energy storage on its grid, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The rapid battery buildout has dampened wholesale price volatility in recent years but has challenged the economics of some proposed energy storage projects, Eugster said. With sufficient contracted revenue, developers may have more flexibility to design and pace projects—for instance, by moving ahead with a solar-only first phase and adding storage in a later phase.

The approach works for other clean energy resources and in markets beyond ERCOT, Eugster said. Ever.green has structured transactions around a repowered wind farm in West Texas, a 28-MW solar farm backed by Wells Fargo in South Carolina, and a 3.2-MW solar procurement by a West Virginia school district, among others.

Like the gamer-backed VPPA, the West Texas wind farm transaction—which Ever.green says nearly doubled the facility's capacity—included fractional commitments from small buyers. The project's smallest contract was for just 1,000 MWh annually, the company says.

"Every place is unique and different, but what is common is those projects need long-term offtake to help stand up," Eugster said.