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ALBUQUERQUE, NM (AP) – Facebook is currently building a huge solar power plant in western Texas, considered one of the country's largest solar projects and the social media giant's first direct investment in energy. renewable.
The Boston – based renewable energy developer, Longroad Energy, recently announced its partnership with Facebook on the $ 416 million project, while Facebook is completing the construction of a nearby data center. Albuquerque.
The Prospero Solar project located north of Odessa, Texas, will have a capacity of 379 megawatts, enough to power an estimated 72,000 households on average nationwide, the Solar Energy Industries Association announced.
The project exceeds Facebook's goal of using renewable energy to power its data centers, where the social media giant stores photos, videos and other information that people post on the platform. form.
Prospero Solar is expected to be completed next year and will occupy approximately 18 square kilometers, more than five times the size of Central Park in New York.
Facebook, based in Menlo Park, Calif., Will be the only investor in tax capital, Longroad said.
Ben Inskeep, an badyst at EQ Research, a North Carolina-based renewable energy consulting firm, said it made sense for Facebook to invest in solar energy as renewables become more and more affordable and its data centers have huge operating costs.
"West Texas has some of the best solar resources in the country," said Inskeep. "So it's not saying that you support renewable energy, it makes good business sense."
Shell Energy North America and Facebook will share the energy produced by the solar park.
"Facebook is delighted to be one of the first companies to use direct investment to achieve its renewable energy goals," said Peter Freed, director of energy strategy for the company. company, in a statement.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in April that Facebook is building six new solar projects to support its data centers. They host tens of thousands of computer servers, connected to the outside world by fiber optic cables.
"Our data centers are already among the most energy – efficient in the world, and last year we set a goal that all our data centers and offices use 100% renewable energy. here 2020 ", writes Zuckerberg on his personal Facebook page. "These new solar projects will help us achieve this goal."
It comes as Facebook fights New Mexico's regulators via a new data line to its data center in the small town of Los Lunas.
Last month, state regulators refused to reconsider their decision to charge Facebook $ 39 million for the transmission line. They said taxpayers could not be charged for the project because the line would not benefit retail customers.
The New Mexico Public Service Co. has expressed disappointment with this decision and is considering various options for proceeding.
The New Mexico Data Center is one of seven such sites for Facebook and includes six buildings for data storage. It is located on a stretch of desert on the edge of Los Lunas, which is just beyond the largest metropolitan area of New Mexico and along the Rio Grande.
Each of the data center buildings is about the size of four football fields and has several "data rooms", or huge dark rooms where Facebook plans to store dozens of rows of gigantic servers. Two of these halls are now operational, while construction begun more than two years ago will continue until 2023, the company said.
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