XELA ENERGY: First on Site, First with the Power
Xela Energy is proving that clean power can be delivered directly behind the meter for large energy users. Through a land-led strategy, the company has already secured a significant project portfolio that will see it develop renewable energy generating assets and PPAs with energy-hungry clients. Founder and CEO Alex Goodall tells Energy Focus more about growth in this innovative but challenging market sector.
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Interview with Alex Goodall, CEO
The question hanging over every data centre developer, every hyperscaler, every AI-hungry technology company building infrastructure at speed is always the same: where is the power coming from? Grids were not designed for this moment. No one, as Alex Goodall puts it, anticipated the power demands of modern humanity through complex computing, and the consequence is that electricity infrastructure around the world is lagging significantly behind what is required. Into that gap, with a model that is genuinely without precedent in the UK market, Goodall and Xela Energy has stepped.
The company announced a rebrand in early 2026, moving from its previous identity as Clean Energy Capital to become Xela Energy as the business moves from startup into scale-up. The change is more than cosmetic — it marks a moment of confidence, a signal that what began as a well-funded idea is now a business with real assets, real projects under construction, and a land position next to every major data centre site in the UK. “We are different to others, and there is nothing else like us in the market,” says Goodall, Founder and CEO.
Goodall’s background is the ones of foundations on which Xela was built. He spent more than 15 years in the energy industry, building and selling businesses along the way. An early ground-mount solar company was sold to SunEdison. A consultancy that advised governments on solar policy — working with the Bahrain leadership, the Norwegian government, and ultimately Statkraft — led to a role as Head of Solar at Statkraft itself, deploying the very strategy he had helped develop. When he identified a gap that the large energy companies were not pursuing, the path was clear.
“I spotted a niche in the market, but Statkraft wanted to focus on large scale grid projects,” Goodall explains. Private finance was raised — oversubscribed, generating more than £5 million — and a team was built. When the time came for institutional funding, more than £100 million in equity followed, backed by True Green Capital Management, a dedicated US investment fund with a global deployment mandate. “They understand what we are doing and we see them as a partner rather than a funder,” says Goodall.
The model itself is built on a simple observation with profound commercial implications. Data centre and energy intensive development locations are publicly known — the planning process is transparent and the information is freely available. What Xela does is look at the land surrounding those sites before anyone else does, and secure it through option or acquisition. By the time a data centre developer wants power, Xela already has the land, the planning permission, and a technology-agnostic, ready-to-build renewable energy plan sitting directly adjacent to the site.
“Instead of being reactive to the customer, if they ever release their tender, we are proactive,” Goodall says. “We can easily and quickly arrange the project and supply the power, and we are ready to create lasting partnerships.” The private wire connection — running power directly from the renewable generation asset to the client’s facility without going near the grid — means speed, security, and the ability to undercut grid pricing.
HURSLEY AND IBM
A project that showcases the Xela model and its brilliance is already under construction. In May 2026, Xela Energy broke ground on its first project at Hursley Park, directly connected to IBM’s historic Hampshire campus near Winchester. The installation — described publicly as the first of its kind in the UK to connect a data centre facility to a dedicated solar installation via private wire — is a solar asset from which IBM will use 100% of the power generated. There is no export to the grid. There is no sharing of generation. The state-of-the-art solar system will generate nearly five million kWh of energy annually, saving the equivalent of 46,000 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime.
“We expect to energise by the end of 2026,” Goodall says. “That is a private wire dedicated to IBM who will use 100% of the power generated by a solar asset — this is a pioneering global project and is a cornerstone project for us.”
The significance of Hursley extends beyond the specific project. It demonstrates that the model works — that a large, sophisticated corporate energy user will commit to a long-term power purchase arrangement with a specialist developer who has secured the surrounding land and designed the project to serve that single customer’s needs. The private wire route also matters from a speed perspective. Grid connection timescales in the UK are measured in years, frequently over a decade for significant projects. Xela does not join that queue. The project is developed, consented and built independently, and power starts flowing when the asset is commissioned rather than when the grid operator is ready.
Next in line is a renewable plant in Wales, adjacent to the major Vantage data centre where Microsoft is the primary tenant, running its cloud and AI infrastructure for the Azure network. “We are looking at planning for a 55MW plant in Newport,” Goodall confirms. “We can deliver a significant project there, where there are real constraints.”
This project illustrates the model at a larger scale, with a constrained grid environment, a hyperscaler customer with large and growing power requirements, and Xela already positioned with the land and the plan before the formal procurement process begins.
THE SCALE OF NEED
The macro context for Xela’s business is not merely supportive — it is urgent. According to the International Energy Agency, data centre electricity consumption grew by 17% in 2025, with AI-focused data centres growing even faster — up 50% in a single year. The capital expenditure of the five largest technology companies surpassed $400 billion in 2025 and is projected to increase by a further 75% in 2026. The IEA’s central projection sees global data centre electricity demand doubling from 485 TWh in 2025 to approximately 950 TWh by 2030 — equivalent to Japan’s total electricity consumption.
Against this backdrop, the traditional route of connecting data centres to the grid is not a viable answer for the pace at which the industry is moving, creating opportunity. “The grid, around the world, is weak,” Goodall says. “No one anticipated the power demands of humanity through the AI race and through the cloud growth.”
The internal structure Xela has built to operate at this scale is deliberate and covers every function that matters. “We have a land team, we have a dedicated enterprise sales team, we have inhouse planning and project management, we have inhouse finance and legal, and we have a development team inhouse,” Goodall explains. That institutional depth is a prerequisite for raising the kind of capital that funds a 2-3GW development pipeline.
“I have found that you have to make a business as institutional as possible to attract institutional investors. You must have the right processes in place to give the market confidence,” he adds. Partnerships with installers and independent connection providers, including RJ Power Networks, handle the physical installation of assets on developed sites.
The ambition now is to take this model beyond the UK. The company is in conversations about expansion into other countries, and the logic travels. Wherever a data centre is being planned, wherever a pharmaceutical manufacturer or a large industrial facility needs power faster and cheaper than the grid can provide, Xela’s model is applicable.
“We are doing deals with FTSE 100 global organisations, and we are very excited about what the future holds,” Goodall says. “We expect to see 50 and 100MW deals coming through in the very near future.”
The question — where are the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and the rest going to get their sustainable power from? — is one the industry has been asking without a satisfying answer. “We are here to solve that problem,” Goodall says. With ground broken at Hursley, planning underway in Newport, and a land position covering every major data centre site in the UK, Xela Energy is moving from theory to evidence at exactly the moment the industry needs it most.