Published

3 years ago

December 12, 2023

Alice Rush

Meta has announced that its Mesa data center will soon be supported by solar energy from the Salt River Project (SRP) through a contract with Ørsted.

Under the contract, Meta will receive the majority portion of energy generated by Ørsted’s Eleven Mile Solar Center, a 300 MW solar farm and 300 MW, four-hour BESS currently under construction in Pinal County, Ariz.

Once online next year, this will be the largest solar-plus-battery project on SRP’s power grid, and one of the largest battery energy storage systems built in a single phase in the U.S., says Ørsted. The solar and stored energy not needed by the Meta data center will be available to SRP’s customer base.

Meta will also receive an allocation of 50 MW from the 100 MW West Line Solar Facility, which opened earlier this year in Eloy. In addition, the company is slated to receive a portion of solar energy from the 200 MW Brittlebush Solar Facility in Coolidge, expected to be online next year.

“We are proud to partner with SRP to bring new solar energy to the grid. Access to renewable energy and a strong, reliable grid were an important part of our decision to build in Mesa,” says Urvi Parekh, Meta’s head of renewable energy. “Meta is committed to having a positive impact on local communities and we’re excited to help bring this additional investment and jobs to the area.”

“SRP is pleased to partner with Meta to add more solar to help meet Meta’s renewable energy goals and SRP’s sustainability commitments,” says SRP’s Bobby Olsen. “As SRP focuses on responsibly decarbonizing our generation mix, we will need to more than double our power resource capacity by 2035. Strategic partnerships with customers like Meta and renewable energy developers like Ørsted help us get there.”

Eleven Mile Solar Center is currently under construction and is expected to be operational next year. Located on over 2,000 acres, the project is estimated to generate $89 million in tax revenue over its lifetime, says Ørsted.

The post Meta Mesa Data Center to be Powered by Orsted’s Salt River Project appeared first on Solar Industry.

Meta Mesa Data Center to be Powered by 300 MW Orsted Project

Renewable Energy

The Red Scare

Published

8 hours ago

July 1, 2026

Alice Rush

I saw an interview earlier today, in which a TV news journalist (I forget which one) predicted that the threat of communism is going to be the central theme of the Republican leading up to the midterm elections.

This makes sense, given that the target audience is largely unaware that:

In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy led this nation through a nightmarish effort to imprison anyone with any ties to communism. This is now regarded as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.S. history.

and

There are dozens of social democracies around the globe that offer the citizens extremely high qualities of life. The countries at the top of the World Happiness Rankings are, in order,

Finland (Score: 7.764)
Iceland (Score: 7.540)
Denmark (Score: 7.539)
Costa Rica (Score: 7.439)
Sweden (Score: 7.255)
Norway (Score: 7.242)
The Netherlands (Score: 7.223)

Now, many MAGA folks can’t find Finland on a map of the world, but it’s that very level of ignorance that makes all this horsecrap work.

The Red Scare

Renewable Energy

NOAA Set Up Website — for You

Published

1 day ago

June 30, 2026

Alice Rush

Trump is working hard to dismantling NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the largest collection of American scientists focusing on climate change. He proposed a budget cut of $1.7 billion, or about 27% for 2026. More to the point, he shut down NOAA’s website, that, formerly, gave everyone on Earth the ability to look at key climate-related data.