Spanish Renewable Energy Company Links With Google Cloud

Matthew Broersma,
data centre

Spanish renewable energy firm Capital Energy in deal with Google Cloud, which also announces unified support for popular Red Hat clone Rocky Linux

Spanish renewable energy group Capital Energy is to work with Google Cloud on a digitalisation and data analytics deal.

The collaboration, initially set for five years, will see Capital Energy sending data from thousands of sensors on its wind turbines and solar panels into Google’s cloud computing infrastructure to extend the life of the assets, lower costs and increase revenue, the company said.

It said it also expects the arrangement to lower its carbon footprint and decrease the risk of cyber-attacks.

“Google Cloud has a vision similar to ours which makes it the ideal travel companion for us,” the company said in a statement.

GoogleRenewable energy

Capital Energy aims to become the Iberian peninsula’s first entirely renewable energy operator. Spain is aiming to generate 67 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2026.

Separately, Google Cloud said it would work with CIQ, a high-performance computing company that backs the popular Rocky Linux operating system distribution, with unified support as organisations shift away from CentOS.

CentOS has been developed as a free Red Hat Linux clone since 2004, and was acquired by Red Hat in 2014. At times CentOS has been the single most widely used distribution on web servers.

But Red Hat pulled its funding for the project in 2020, and Rocky Linux is one of the main alternatives organisations are shifting to.

Google has long worked with community-maintained distribution, which is led by Gregory Kurtzer, one of CentOS’ original founders, who created Rocky Linux and CIQ in response to the demise of CentOS.

Rocky Linux support

Google Cloud was the first cloud provider to offer Rocky Linux images shortly after the OS was released, and was one of the first to financially back the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF).

Kurtzer said that through the deal the cloud platform and the operating system were both supported by “a single call to Google”.

Google said the arrangement was “the next step in providing an optimised and supported experience” to customers as they shift to Rocky Linux.

Google is also working with CIQ to provide performance-tuned Rocky Linux images, out-of-the-box support for specialised Google infrastructure and migration tools.