Major SRP solar facility ready to power Meta’s data centers

Tempe-based nonprofit utility Salt River Project, along with its partner Orsted, have announced the opening of the 300-megawatt Eleven Mile Solar Center project in Pinal County.

The solar farm was built by Orsted east of Casa Grande, about halfway between Coolidge and Eloy. It includes 300 megawatts of battery storage capacity and is the largest facility of its kind in SRP’s system, covering more than 2,000 acres and expected to generate $80 million in tax revenue over its lifetime.

The bulk of the energy produced at the solar farm is designated for use by Facebook owner Meta under a deal signed in December 2023.

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.

All power from the Eleven Mile facility that Meta doesn’t need will go toward general SRP customers, the nonprofit utility said.

Orsted, a Danish clean energy company, invested about $1 billion into the project and was supported by American companies, such as First Solar, Fluence and NEXTracker, in procuring panels, batteries, and tracking equipment for the project.

“Solar energy paired with battery energy storage will be critical to the reliable delivery of power as the demand for electricity grows,” said David Hardy, Group EVP and CEO Americas at Orsted, in a statement. “Arizona has one of the highest growth rates of electricity in the country due to the surge in data centers and the reshoring of American manufacturing. With our first project in Arizona now complete, we’re thrilled to help meet the growing demand of the state and region with reliable, domestic energy.”

Meta’s decision to tap into the Eleven Mile Solar Center — with additional allocations from the 100-megawatt West Line Solar Facility in Eloy and the 200-megawatt Brittlebush Solar Facility in Coolidge — comes as the state is seeing a steady influx of new data centers and large manufacturing projects, all of which have huge power demands.

Center is one of several new SRP projects

SRP recently updated its sustainability goals to make them more ambitious. It said the Eleven Mile Solar Center is a key element in making that happen.

“The energy and storage capacity provided by the Eleven Mile Solar System plays an important role in helping meet SRP’s ambitious decarbonization goals while providing affordable and reliable energy to our customers,” said Bobby Olsen, Associate General Manager & Chief Planning, Strategy & Sustainability Executive at SRP, in a statement. “We appreciate our partnership with Orsted and Meta to bring more clean energy to our customers.”

With the addition of Eleven Mile, SRP said it has nearly 3,000 megawatts of carbon-free energy – including more than 1,400 MW of solar — serving its customers. SRP also has nearly 1,300 MW of battery and pumped hydro storage supporting its grid. SRP is working to at least double the number of generating resources on its power system in the next 10 years to meet increasing energy demand in the Phoenix metropolitan area as it moves forward with the planned retirement of 1,300 MW of coal resources.

SRP has signed on to a number of solar deals in the past couple of years.

Also in Pinal County, SRP is working on the solar generation facility at the Copper Crossing Energy and Research Center in Florence, southeast of Mesa. It will be able to generate up to 55 megawatts of solar energy, which is enough to power about 12,000 homes.

In July 2023, SRP signed an agreement to purchase 394 megawatts of power from the CO Bar Solar project north of Flagstaff. That was on top of 400 megawatts that SRP already agreed months earlier to buy from the project. Those two deals mean the project will provide SRP enough energy to power about 180,000 typical homes.

That northern Arizona project, which will be the largest solar facility in the state, is expected to offset 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide each year.

About a year ago, SRP CEO Jim Pratt said the company expects to add 20,000 megawatts of capacity, which will be made up of 90% of renewable technologies.