The state Public Regulation Commission approved PNM’s request to construct, own and operate separate 10MW (ac) facilities with expansion to 20MW each, if needed by Facebook.
A PNM spokesman tells Recharge that construction of the solar farms will begin in a few weeks and take about one year to complete.
In a 17 August decision, the PRC approved a “special services contract” that will allow PNM to recover costs tied with provision of the solar energy of up to $31m per year from Facebook. The social media giant will buy the electricity over 25 years with a fixed rate for the first decade.
Both PNM and Facebook underscored that the utility’s ratepayers will not subsidize the cost of the new facilities that are necessary to meet the social media giant’s requirement that the data center be powered with renewable energy.
Facebook projects that its Los Lunas data center could require more than 100MW of power once fully built-out. The first phase will come online in late 2018.
