The Iowa wind farm — called the Rippey Wind Farm and located in Greene County — is owned by RPM Access and its 20 turbines are already online, with a capacity to produce 50 MW of wind power (enough to power 15,000 homes). The power will be bought by Central Iowa Power Cooperative (CIPCO).

Google has a data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and has already invested in other clean power projects in the region as well, including agreeing to buy power through a power purchase agreement from a 114 MW wind farm in Iowa owned by NextEra Energy Resources. Google is investing in clean power projects because it wants to use more clean power for its data centers — the search engine giant plans to have about a third of the power for its data centers come directly from clean power.

Once Google invests in a clean power project, its a tricky move to actually get that power used directly for its data center. Google has often said that it’s making these investments partly to get a return over time on the investment. But a couple months ago, for the first time, Google said it will buy clean energy from a utility in Oklahoma to directly power one of its data centers in Oklahoma.

Here’s some of Google’s clean power investments:

Here are most of Google’s clean power investments to date:

• SolarCity rooftop solar fund. Google has created a $280 million fund with home solar installer SolarCity. This is Google’s largest investment in clean power to date, and its first in home rooftop solar.
• Solar panel projects in Sacramento Calif: Google put $94 million into four solar panel projects, which are being built by Recurrent Energy close to Sacramento, Calif. This was Google’s first investment in utility-scale grid-connected solar panel projects.
• Buying wind power from a utility directly to power a data center in Oklahoma: For the first time in September 2012, Google said it would buy clean energy from a utility to directly power one of its data centers in Oklahoma.
• Clean Power Finance. Google invested $75 million into a solar fund for startup Clean Power Finance. Clean Power Finance will use the money to support solar rooftop projects by third party installers.
• The world’s largest wind farm — in Oregon. Google is investing $100 million in the world’s largest wind farm, the 845 MW Shepherds Flat project under construction in Oregon.
• North Dakota wind farm. Google is investing $38.8 million into 169.5 MW worth of wind projects developed by NextEra Energy Resources in North Dakota.
• East Coast wind farm backbone. Google has invested part of the fund for an East Coast transmission line that is meant to link offshore wind farms, and which recently got an approved rate of return for the project at 12.59 percent.
• Wind power from Iowa wind farm. Google’s first deal for its subsidiary Google Energy — which can buy and sell power on the wholesale electricity markets — plans to buy wind power from 114 MW of wind energy via a wind farm in Iowa owned by NextEra Energy Resources.
• Wind power from Oklahoma wind farm. Google’s second deal via its subsidiary Google Energy is to buy 100 MW of power from a wind farm that’s under construction in Oklahoma by NextEra Energy Resources.
• BrightSource’s solar thermal project. Google invested $168 million into a solar thermal project being built by startup BrightSource Energy in California’s Mojave Desert.
• German solar project. Google is investing €3.5 million ($5 million USD) into a solar photovoltaic farm in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany, which is near Berlin.
• Greentech startups (these are small investments). Google (through a combo of Google Ventures and Google.org) has invested in at least nine “greentech” startups, including battery maker ActaCell, electric vehicle maker Aptera, efficient car maker Next Autoworks, geothermal company Alta Rock, neighbor-to-neighbor car sharing company RelayRides, weather insurance company WeatherBill, smart grid company Silver Spring Networks, biofuel maker Cool Planet Biofuels, and efficient power gear conversion tech startup Transphorm.

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Like Google’s previous clean power purchase agreement, the wind farm is being developed by NextEra Energy Resources. Google announced its first deal through Google Energy — its subsidiary which has been approved to buy and sell electricity on federally-regulated wholesale markets — in summer 2010, and that wind power purchase agreement was for a wind farm in Iowa, also owned by NextEra Energy Resources.

Google has also made investments through Google corporate in recent weeks in both solar farms and wind farms. The deal announced this morning is different in that it’s through Google Energy and is also a contract to buy the clean power itself over a 20-year period at a fixed rate (as opposed to buying equity in a clean power project).

Google’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl, who will discuss the news in depth at our Green:Net event on Thursday, told me in an interview on Wednesday that the 100.8 MW wind farm in Oklahoma will be built over the next six to nine months and Google has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to buy the power. NextEra Energy Resources was looking for an anchor tenant to buy the power, and often, developers can use an anchor tenant to get a better financing rate.

Google wouldn’t disclose other financial terms of the deal, but Weihl said over the long term, he expects Google to make a decent amount of money on the deal. Wind power purchase agreements (wind is the cheapest utility-scale clean power out there) can set wind power rates around six cents a kilowatt hour for a 20-year contract, depending on location.

Google will buy the clean power from the Oklahoma wind farm, then sell it to the wholesale energy markets, given, for regulatory reasons, it can’t directly use the power for its own purposes. Weihl told me that in contrast to offsets that other companies commonly use to reduce their carbon footprint, Google is adding actual clean power to the grid, which both helps with Google’s carbon footprint and could make Google money.

However, it gets “interesting,” “subtle,” and “nuanced” when Google starts thinking about how it could use clean power for its data centers, as Weihl put it. It all seems like a grand experiment right now, but one day, perhaps, Google could build a data center near one of its clean power assets and tap renewable energy to power its servers. It’s still a confusing subject (did I lose you yet?) and Google has also released a white paper on the subject on its blog.

Tune into the live video feed of Green:Net to watch Weihl’s remarks at 1:30 p.m. PDT.

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The investment in the Shepherds Flat project follows on a $168 million investment announced last week into a solar thermal project being built by startup BrightSource Energy in California’s Mojave Desert, as well as a planned $38.8 million investment into 169.5 MW worth of wind projects developed by NextEra Energy Resources in North Dakota, and a €3.5 million ($5 million USD) investment in a solar photovoltaic farm in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany, which is near Berlin. In addition to its investments, Google’s subsidiary Google Energy — which can buy and sell electricity on the wholesale markets — plans to buy 114 MW of wind power from an Iowa wind farm owned by NextEra Energy resources.

Google says it’s interested in backing the world’s largest wind farm partly because the project will use next-gen wind tech, permanent magnet generators, which can improve the efficiency of turbines, and increase the reliability of the grid connection, and which aren’t readily used in currently installed large utility wind farms. The Shepherds Flat will use GE’s 2.5xl wind turbines.

The Shepherds Flat wind farm is anticipated to be the largest in the world when it is fully built sometime in 2012. It’ll stretch across 30 square miles of Oregon, and will cost $2 billion to build. Southern California Edison, a utility, has entered into a contract to buy the wind power.

Google’s co-investors in the farm’s most recent funding include a subsidiary of Japanese giant ITOCHU Corporation, Tyr Energy, and a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corp.: Sumitomo Corp. of America. Along with Google, the three companies have put around $500 million into the farm. Previous investors and partners on the farm include GE unit GE Energy Financial Services and wind developer Caithness Energy.

Google launched its “RE<C” program back in 2007, which is geek speak for Google’s “renewable energy cheaper than coal” project. The goal was to spend “tens of millions of dollars on R&D,” and ultimately produce a “gigawatt of renewable energy capacity,” over several years. You’re probably wondering what on earth Google wants to do with clean power.

One of the main incentives for Google is financial returns. Rick Needham, Google’s green business operations manager, told me last year the North Dakota wind farms were an attractive deal for Google on the basis of the returns alone.

Wind power purchase agreements (wind is the cheapest utility-scale clean power out there) can set wind power rates around six cents a kilowatt hour for a 20-year contract, depending on location. It can sometimes cost even less with federal subsidies. As Lux Research analyst Ted Sullivan told me in an interview last year, “That’s pretty cheap.”

But Google’s subsidiary Google Energy will also likely have first dibs on the option to buy any available clean power from projects that Google invests in. Google didn’t actually say it would be using the clean energy from The Shepherds Flat project, but that could be an option one day. California utility Southern California Edison currently has a deal to buy the clean power.

Google’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl (who will be speaking at Green:Net 2011 on April 21 in San Francisco) made it clear to us in interviews that Google Energy is also ultimately about being able to procure energy, specifically clean energy, to power the search engine giant’s data centers. Google can enter into a power purchase agreement contract with, say, a wind or solar developer, agree to buy the clean power before the project is built, and help the developer get a better interest rate for the financing of the plant. Given Google’s data centers largely already have their own power sources, Google could then sell the clean power on the open market until one of its data center power contracts expired.

Check out a video clip of Weihl being interviewed about green energy and data centers at Green:Net 2010. Come to Green:Net 2011 to hear more about the intersection of clean power and data centers, to hear about Google and Yahoo’s green data center plans and to listen to NRG Energy CEO David Crane speak about solar and the smart grid.

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The business, which also has natural-gas, nuclear and hydro power plants under its belt, operates more than 6.3 gigawatts of wind generation, along with 310 megawatts of solar thermal.

In better economic times, a name change could start the rumor mill going about possible bigger changes in the works, like FPL possibly spinning off its renewable energy arm. But more likely FPL is just putting its clean energy face forward, especially in light of the upcoming administration’s call for more clean technology in the U.S.

“There’s long been speculation of whether or not FPL Energy was going to be spun off,” said Tyler Tringas, a wind analyst at New Energy Finance, but he said that kind of move is unlikely in this current financial climate.

“The market conditions right now are pretty terrible for doing any kind of separate IPOs,” he said. “Also, in general, the valuations that the public markets are getting for comparable wind generators, like Iberdrola and Energias de Portugal, their renewable units, are just quite low.”

As for whether the new name could set the stage for an outright sale of the unit, that’s even more unlikely. “FPL is one of the stronger players in the U.S. renewables market at the moment,” said Tringas. “It’s much more likely that they would be the ones making acquisitions.”

Sometimes a name is just a name. But FPL, which stands for Florida Power & Light, probably also realized that there really shouldn’t be an “F” in FPL Energy at all. Of all the 63 wind farms and seven solar thermal facilities — and even including the natural gas, nuclear, and hydro plants — not one of them is actually in Florida.

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