Foresight needed for Facebook datacenter

Short-term impacts on electricity rates could be offset by a revitalized NM economy built on renewable energy

Facebook, one of the world’s largest internet service companies, has announced that it is seeking to locate a massive datacenter in either New Mexico or Utah. It makes business sense that Facebook would do so, as it is looking to power its electricity-intensive infrastructure with renewable energy that, in places like New Mexico, is now cost-competitive with conventional sources and — perhaps even more critically — enables the company to establish its green credentials.

It’s no secret that Facebook has been criticized for placing enormous demand on electricity suppliers who, at the margins, have only fossil-fuel plants available to provide huge new power demands.

Is it technically feasible for New Mexico’s largest utility, PNM, to provide the additional renewable energy? Yes, but it isn’t going to be easy.

While the specifications of Facebook’s datacenter haven’t been publicly released, we can look at other similar such centers to see what the requirements might be.

For the Facebook datacenter in Ft. Worth, Texas, housing mostly computers and a few offices, something like 70 megawatts of power are required continuously. To put that into perspective, that would be around 3 percent of PNM’s overall generating capacity from all sources.

So, there is no doubt that the datacenter would be one of the single largest electricity consumers in the state — using about as much as Sandia National Laboratories.

Since renewable resources have a “capacity factor” of only about 25 percent (which means that, over the long run, they produce on average about a quarter of their peak or “nameplate” maximum) that, in turn, means that a 300 MW facility would be needed to provide the Facebook datacenter with all of its energy from renewable sources on average.

And 300 MW is about exactly the entirety of PNM’s existing renewable portfolio.

Thus, if my estimates are correct, PNM would have to double its current renewable energy resources to supply the Facebook datacenter.

A 300 MW solar photovoltaic plant would be mammoth, consisting of about 1 million solar panels and requiring about 2,400 acres of land — about 4 square miles. There is only one other example of a photovoltaic plant this large: Agua Caliente in Arizona (297 megawatts), installed in 2013-14 at a cost of about $1.8 billion.

Alternatively, wind turbines dotting the landscape over 26 square miles would be needed to do the same job.

There are many upsides to this project, though no one should minimize the engineering challenges of managing a large, variable electricity output from sunshine or wind.

Solar and wind intensity in New Mexico are far better than in Utah, so the cost to provide solar energy should be commensurately less. Emissions from fossil fuel burning would go down in the state, clearly a benefit to public health.

PNM’s national leadership in developing very large battery storage of electricity augmenting the company’s technical leadership in making renewable energy even more practical. And, of course, there would construction employment and jobs at the datacenter itself.

But, more important than all of these is the potential for revival of the moribund New Mexico economy.

Other smaller businesses might come to realize that our solar energy could be used to offset what is probably their biggest environmental impact: transporting employees from home to work and back.

With electric cars now practical, forward-looking companies could provide charging stations for their workers’ vehicles at precisely the time of day when solar power peaks.

With a project this large, there are many competing interests, both financial and political. Thoughtful leadership from the Public Regulation Commission and the governor’s office — commodities seldom in adequate supply — and a bit of foresight on the part of the rest of us will help us weigh the inevitable short-term impacts on electricity rates with the prospect of a revitalized economy built on an environmentally benign 21st-century energy industry.

The opportunity is here for the taking. Let’s make it happen.