Facebook's Prineville Data Center. Credit: Facebook.Facebook has been blindsided by a $39 million bill relating to the construction of a new transmission line for its data center in New Mexico.
According to the Washington Post, members of the state’s Public Regulation Commission voted 5-0 in favor of the invoice. The reason? The members say there is not benefit to the public, only to Facebook, and therefore the social media giant should foot the bill for the construction.
Facebook, however, says the bill is not in line with the agreement between the company and the commission. Further, Facebook says the bill could result in the tech company deviating from its plan to use 100% renewable energy to run the data center.
The proposed high-voltage line would transmit electricity produced by a 166-megawatt wind farm being built by Avangrid Renewables to supply Facebook’s data center. The total cost of the transmission line is approximately $85 million.
Facebook has been building data centers at a feverish pace, trying to stay ahead of the storage space needed to hold the images and videos of its 2.3 billion users. In May 2018, the company announced that a nearly 1 million-square-foot data center would be constructed at the foot of Eagle Mountain in Utah.
Eagle Mountain City, together with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) and the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCUtah) announced the data center will be constructed at the Sweetwater Industrial Park in Eagle Mountain, Utah.
Facebook’s investment includes more than $100 million in infrastructure, including a new electrical substation that will bring 1,000 megawatts of new power delivery capacity to the region to support additional economic development in Eagle Mountain and the surrounding area. The data center would be powered by 100%, net-new renewable energy through utilization of Rocky Mountain Power’s available renewable energy tariffs. Facebook will purchase its own water rights and construct the required water infrastructure. The data center facility is designed to be incredibly water-efficient and will reuse water multiple times.
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