True North is Avangrid’s (NYSE: AGR) first solar farm in Texas – and it will be the largest solar project in the company’s portfolio.
Avangrid installed more than 488,000 solar panels at the 321 megawatt (MW) solar farm in Falls County, Texas, over the past several months, and it says it finished ahead of schedule.
It’s currently in the process of commissioning True North, and it will soon begin to build a dedicated O&M facility onsite.
The construction of True North, which features $30 million worth of solar trackers from Array Technologies, supported 350 local jobs at peak construction. The solar farm will support several permanent, high-paying jobs in the community for the life of the project. Avangrid, which is Iberdrola’s US subholding company, expects to pay more than $40 million in taxes over the life of the project.
True North is part of the $22 billion investment that Avangrid has planned between 2022 and 2025. For Texas, these 321 MW of solar join the 1,250 MW of installed wind capacity that the company currently has in the state.
Avangrid has formed a long-term power purchase agreement with Meta for 100% of the clean electricity generated. Meta’s upcoming data center in neighboring Temple, its second data center facility in Texas, will use the clean power. Commercial operation is expected at the end of the year.
Meta’s data centers use a lot of energy for both computing and cooling, continuous expansion, and upgrades. The construction of new data centers often leads to infrastructure development, such as building new power lines or substations. The tech giant is tapping into renewable energy to power its new data centers like the one in Temple, but the overall demand from data centers remains a challenge for power grids and energy providers.
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