Two administrative law judges last week recommended that Texas regulators approve a 366-MW bridge-to-power plant for Meta to be built by microgrid company Enchanted Rock.
The $499.8 million McCloud facility, an onsite power plant, would use 813 modular gas generators on 31 acres beside the data center that Meta-owned Wurldwide is developing. Local utility El Paso Electric would own the plant and contract with Enchanted Rock to install and operate it.
For an initial bridge period of up to five years, the generators would operate as an island, electrically connected to the data center but not to El Paso Electric’s transmission system. The bridge ends when transmission improvements connect the data center and plant to the grid.
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As a condition of approval, the judges said El Paso Electric must shield its other retail customers from the plant’s capital and operating costs for the life of the facility.
The judges questioned why El Paso Electric did not seek competing bids or evaluate other modular gas generators. The utility said Wurldwide preferred Enchanted Rock’s smaller units because they take up substantially less space than a traditional central plant.
The proposed decision now goes before the Texas Public Utility Commission. If the project is approved, the utility expects construction to finish in May 2027.
The project does not appear to be affected by Texas Gov. Abbott’s halt on new data center permit approvals in ERCOT because El Paso Electric is located outside of the grid operator’s territory. Abbott ordered the halt until the state completes an audit of how data centers are affecting resources and energy reliability within ERCOT.
As a next step, the Texas Public Utility Commission will consider the proposed decision. If the project wins approval, the utility expects the project to begin commercial operation in 2027.
The project is an example of how the microgrid play has changed with the rise of large load data centers. While 10 megawatts was once considered large for a microgrid, they are now expanding in hundreds of megawatts. These larger projects often use the nomenclature “ onsite energy” rather than microgrid.
