Facebook, in pursuit of the company’s goal of becoming fully renewably powered by the end of this year, has signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) for three solar projects in Utah, totaling 235 MW of capacity.
The three projects are: Graphite Solar, an 80-MW installation coming to, wait for it, Carbon County, and being developed by rPlus Energies; Rocket Solar, another 80-MW installation, this time in Box Elder County, developed by D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments and Enyo Renewable Energy; and another D.E. Shaw Renewable and Enyo endeavor, the 75-MW Horseshoe Solar installation coming to Tooele County.
The two D.E. Shaw/Enyo projects are set to come on-line by 2022, while Graphite will follow a year later in 2023. All three installations are being developed under Rocky Mountain Power’s Schedule 34 green energy tariff, which allows large customers to purchase renewable energy generated on their behalf.
Facebook has shown not just significant interest towards supporting renewable development, but supporting development specifically in Utah. Last month the company announced that it had signed a PPA for the 122-MW Cove Mountain 2 solar project in Iron County, Utah, one of the largest projects it has signed a power contract with to date. Upon the completion of the PPAs for Graphite, Rocket and Horseshoe, Facebook now has contracts for 694 MW of solar power in Utah — roughly 63% of the state’s solar generation capacity.
Outside of Utah, Facebook also announced PPAs in Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee and Ireland which, when combined with the Cove Mountain project, came out to roughly 806 MW of solar and wind power.
In New Mexico, Facebook has 100 MW spread across two projects to feed the Los Lunas data center. The company has also partnered with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on two solar projects, totaling 377 MW, to support Facebook’s data center in Huntsville, Alabama. These 377 MW are made up of a 227-MW project in Colbert County, Alabama and a 150-MW farm in Lincoln County, Tennessee.
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