The PPAs will be used to power Meta data centers across the Southwest Power Pool.
US utility and power generation company AES has signed two Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) with Meta, which will see the tech firm offtake 650MW of solar power in Texas and Kansas.
The exact details of the solar projects were not disclosed, however, it is understood that the power will be fed into the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) market, which will subsequently be used to support Meta's data centers across the market.
The SPP is one of the US’s Regional Transmission Operators, managing the electric grid and wholesale power market in the central US. The spans 14 states, including all of Kansas and Oklahoma, and portions of New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Iowa, Wyoming, and Nebraska.
"We are thrilled to work with AES to bring forward these two solar energy projects," said Urvi Parekh, global head of energy, Meta. "These solutions support our goal for 100 percent clean and renewable energy and will add new generation to the grid in these markets."
Meta has signed multiple renewable energy supply agreements so far this year. In March, it signed a PPA with RWE for 100 percent of the output of its Waterloo Solar project in Bastrop County, Texas.
In addition to signing several PPAs, Meta has also signed several Environmental Attribute Purchase Agreements (EAPA) across the US market. Unlike PPAs, an EAPA does not involve purchasing electricity itself but rather purchasing its environmental benefits in the form of renewable energy credits, with the power fed directly into the grid.
For example, in May, Meta signed an EAPA with Sunraycer Renewables for the “environmental attributes” from the 127MWdc (97.5MWac) Midpoint Solar project in Hill County and the 184MWdc (143MWac) Gaia Solar project in Navarro County.
AEP is one of the largest power companies in the US. It has more than 32GW of operational capacity and a pipeline of assets that exceeds 32.7GW. AES has signed several PPAs with major hyperscalers in the past several years.
Most recently, in March, AES signed three PPAs with Microsoft across Michigan, Missouri, and Illinois for a combined 475MW of power.
