power purchase

Meta to buy all power from new ENGIE Texas solar farm

Meta will use electricity generated by one of ENGIE's Texas solar farms to power its U.S. data centers. Photo via engie.com.

Meta, the parent company of social media platform Facebook, has agreed to buy all of the power from a $900 million solar farm being developed near Abilene by Houston-based energy company ENGIE North America.

The 600-megawatt Swenson Ranch solar farm, located in Stonewall County, will be the largest one ever built in the U.S. by ENGIE. The solar farm is expected to go online in 2027.

Meta will use electricity generated by the solar farm to power its U.S. data centers. All told, Meta has agreed to purchase more than 1.3 gigawatts of renewable energy from four ENGIE projects in Texas.

“This project marks an important step forward in the partnership between our two companies and their shared desire to promote a sustainable and competitive energy model,” Paulo Almirante, ENGIE’s senior executive vice president of renewable and flexible power, said in a news release.

In September, ENGIE North America said it would collaborate with Prometheus Hyperscale, a developer of sustainable liquid-cooled data centers, to build data centers at ENGIE-owned renewable energy and battery storage facilities along the I-35 corridor in Texas. The corridor includes Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Waco.

The first projects under the ENGIE-Prometheus umbrella are expected to go online in 2026.

ENGIE and Prometheus said their partnership “brings together ENGIE's deep expertise in renewables, batteries, and energy management and Prometheus' highly efficient liquid-cooled data center design to meet the growing demand for reliable, sustainable compute capacity — particularly for AI and other high-performance workloads.”

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A View From HETI

ERock will provide equipment for 470 megawatts of capacity to Anthropic. Photo courtesy ERock

Two months after its $400 million IPO, Houston-based ERock (NYSE: EROC) has landed a power-generator deal with AI powerhouse Anthropic, owner of the Claude platform.

In its Q2 earnings report, ERock says it will provide equipment to Anthropic with a 470-megawatt capacity. ERock specializes in utility-grade, onsite microgrid power systems for data centers and other customers. The company previously did business as Enchanted Rock.

The Anthropic deal adds to ERock’s backlog of about $1.7 billion in orders—a figure representing a 1,000 percent year-over-year jump in backorders thanks in large part to the AI boom. ERock expects most of the backlog to convert to revenue by the end of 2027, said Ian Blakely, the company’s chief financial officer.

Bank of America analyst Ross Fowler says the Anthropic contract boosts confidence in ERock’s ability to secure other major deals, according to Traders Union. The Anthropic deal is ERock’s third major data center contract, with separate Anthropic deals for operations and maintenance services expected to follow, Fowler said.

CEO John Carrington says Anthropic’s order “reinforces the momentum” ERock is witnessing across its customer base.

“We are seeing a lot of interest in Texas. It seems to be the easiest place to get a site set up,” company President Corey Amthor said

In its Q2 earnings release—its first as a public company—ERock also reported:

  • Launching generator-assembly operations at its Hyperion equipment factory in Northwest Houston. The plant will expand ERock’s assembly capabilities to 1.2 gigawatts of capacity by the end of 2026.
  • Starting construction of a $473 million, 366-megawatt El Paso Electric natural-gas-powered plant to supply power for Meta Platforms’ $14 billion, 1,000-acre AI data center campus in El Paso. Meta is the parent company of the Facebook and Instagram social media companies.

“Meta gains access to an operational data center years earlier than may otherwise be possible, while El Paso Electric gains a flexible, low-cost, low-emissions grid asset that can support long-term system reliability,” Carrington said.

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