Clean energy developer EDP Renewables North America, Arizona utility Salt River Project (SRP) and US technology giant Meta have commissioned the 200MW Brittlebush Solar Park in the US state of Arizona.
All three companies are involved in the project: SRP manages the local grid, which now includes power from the Brittlebush project; EDP Renewables will handle the day-to-day management of the facility; and electricity generated at the project will be sold to Meta under a power purchase agreement (PPA). The electricity will be used to support the power demands of Meta’s data centre in Mesa, Arizona, and is the third PPA to be signed between the technology giant and EDP Renewables.
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“Arizona’s forward-thinking policies and welcoming business environment for innovative technologies that prioritize sustainability make it a perfect location to generate solar,” noted Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America. “We’re proud of the partnership with Salt River Project and Meta that has resulted in reducing carbon emissions, local economic benefits, and diversifying Arizona’s energy portfolio.”
A number of Arizona utilities have taken steps to expand their utility-scale solar offerings, such as Arizona Public Service (APS), which plans to add 3.5GW of new solar capacity by the end of the decade. These initiatives have contributed to significant growth in the Arizona utility-scale sector, with the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) reporting that the state added around 1GW of utility-scale solar in 2023, comparable to the total capacity installed, across all sectors, in 2021 and 2022 combined.
Arizona currently boasts the fifth-largest solar capacity in the US, with 8.5GW of capacity in operation in the first quarter of this year, according to the SEIA. The association also expects the state to add 11.4GW of new capacity over the next five years, the fourth-most in the country.
Meta has already invested considerably in the Arizona solar sector, signing a PPA with SRP and Danish energy company Ørsted to acquire power from the latter’s Eleven Mile Solar Center last December.
The tech giant also plans to use this electricity to meet the power demand of its Mesa data centre, which is becoming an increasingly important part of the world’s energy mix. National Grid chief executive John Pettigrew said he expects data centre power demand to increase sixfold in the next decade, and yesterday, the Central Statistics Office for Ireland noted that, in 2023, data centres made up 23% of the country’s total energy demand.
