New SRP solar facility to provide power for Meta data center in Mesa

A new 200-megawatt Salt River Project solar power plant near the Pinal County city of Coolidge is set to come online, with all of its capacity dedicated to a new Meta Platforms Inc. data center in Mesa.

SRP this week unveiled the Brittlebush Solar Park project, which is a collaboration with EDP Renewables North America LLC. This is EDP’s second operational project in Arizona, and it is the third renewable energy partnership between EDP and Meta — the company that owns Facebook.

Meta’s data center project in Mesa is on 396 acres it acquired in 2021 on the southeast corner of Elliot and Ellsworth Roads. The company announced in 2022 that it was going to expand the original $800 million, two-building plan to five buildings at a cost of more than $1 billion. Work on the facility has been projected to finish in 2026.

“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, in a statement. “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. This is something every Arizonan can get behind.”

This story is posted in partnership with Phoenix Business Journal. Click to read the full story.