Meta Taps Zelestra for 136 MW Texas Solar

• Meta inks 136‑MW Texas solar PPA, powering data centers and ERCOT peaks, with battery-ready design—locking price certainty, cutting Scope 2, and boosting local jobs and grid resilience.

Meta signed a long-term PPA to buy 136 MW of new Texas solar from developer Zelestra, adding capacity to ERCOT to power its data centers. The deal reflects big tech’s push for contracted clean energy and projects tuned for afternoon peaks and volatile prices. While terms weren’t disclosed, such PPAs typically span 12–20 years, offering price certainty, hedging power costs, and advancing Scope 2 targets.

The plant will use bifacial modules on single-axis trackers with string inverters. ERCOT-ready controls include reactive support, ramp limits, ride-through, and precise telemetry. A “battery-ready” substation anticipates 2–4 hour storage. Construction brings local jobs, tax base, and steady land leases.

What does Meta’s 136 MW Texas solar PPA mean for ERCOT, storage, and costs?

• ERCOT supply and reliability: Adds new daytime capacity in a fast-growing load region, modestly improving reserve margins and damping afternoon price spikes; limited impact on evening peaks unless paired with storage or demand flexibility.
  
• Price formation: Additional solar pushes more hours with low or negative nodal prices, sharpening the spread between midday and evening; may slightly reduce average prices at the plant’s hub while increasing intraday volatility systemwide.
  
• Congestion and deliverability: If sited in West/North zones, it could deepen congestion on known constraints and increase basis risk; if closer to load on the Gulf/Center-Coast, it can ease transmission stress and improve deliverability to major hubs.
  
• Curtailment dynamics: More solar raises curtailment risk in shoulder months; smart plant controls and future storage can mitigate spillage and improve ERCOT ancillary service eligibility.
  
• Effective Load Carrying Capability: Marginal ELCC for standalone solar in ERCOT is declining; pairing later with 2–4 hour batteries would recover capacity value and support evening reliability.
  
• Storage optionality: “Battery-ready” design lets the sponsor add standalone or co-located storage to capture arbitrage, ECRS/Reg/FFR revenues, and shift energy into evening net peaks, improving project cash flows and hedge performance.
  
• IRA incentives: Standalone storage qualifies for the 30% ITC (plus potential adders), improving returns on a future battery and enabling a smaller PPA strike or enhanced merchant upside.
  
• Ancillary services: A future battery can earn in ECRS and fast frequency response, services in high demand as inverter-based resources grow; this diversifies revenue beyond energy arbitrage.
  
• Hedging and shape risk: The corporate offtake reduces Meta’s exposure to ERCOT price spikes but still leaves shape and basis risk with the project unless the contract includes hub-settled, shaped, or as-generated features; batteries help align generation with load shape.
  
• Costs to consumers: Corporate PPAs are privately financed and don’t sit in rate base; near-term effect on retail bills is indirect through LMPs. Added supply lowers wholesale costs at the margin but can raise uplift on constrained lines if congestion intensifies.
  
• Data center load alignment: Supports Meta’s 24/7 decarbonization goals; storage will be key to covering evening and overnight consumption and to meeting tighter hourly matching targets that buyers increasingly seek.
  
• Development timeline and interconnection: ERCOT’s comparatively faster queue still faces new security and modeling requirements; a battery-ready interconnection can shorten later storage add-on timelines and avoid costly re-studies.
  
• Financing signals: Big-tech credit underpins project bankability, lowers cost of capital, and can unlock tax equity for future storage; merchant tail remains important in ERCOT, making flexible controls and dispatchable add-ons valuable.
  
• Market evolution: As ERCOT scales inverter-based resources, plants with advanced controls and storage will be favored in future ancillary service products and any reliability reforms that reward dispatchability.
  
• Community impacts: Construction jobs and tax base arrive sooner with solar; later battery addition can extend local economic benefits and create operations roles while improving grid resilience during extreme weather.