Meta Expands Louisiana Data Center Project With $50B Investment
Meta announced Monday that it is expanding its Richland Parish, Louisiana, data center to 5GW of compute capacity in a town that’s already seeing big returns for teachers, local businesses, and students. The data center expansion is an investment of more than $50 billion in the Richland Parish region — one of the largest investments in AI infrastructure in the world, build in America — supporting infrastructure projects, workforce development programs, and an energy agreement that is expected to save Entergy Louisiana customers more that $2 billion over 20 years, on top of the $650 million in savings for customers from the first agreement. Louisiana Delta Community College is receiving a $5 million donation from Meta to create scholarships to train local residents for critical data center jobs. All graduates from Richland Parish’s high schools, beginning with the class of 2026, will be eligible for full scholarships for any data center-related trade certificate or course.Meta Expands Lousiana Data Center Project With $50B Investment – tEDmag
Independent power producer and renewable energy developer Enbridge has announced that Meta will purchase power delivered by the first phase of its Cowboy Project utility-scale solar and energy storage facility. The plan for the $1.2 billion site located near Cheyenne, Wyoming includes 365 MW of solar generation capacity and a 200 MW, 1,600 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) supplied and serviced by Tesla. The Cowboy Project expands the existing renewable energy partnership between Enbridge and Meta, which now totals approximately 1.6 GW of contracted capacity across North America, and includes 
A transformational investment that cements the state’s status as a major innovation hub and puts this picturesque rural community on the leading edge of a global digital revolution. Meta projects the data center will support 500 or more direct new jobs in Richland Parish. 
An artificial intelligence data center that would use more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined before expanding to as much as five times that size will be built soon near Cheyenne, according to the city’s mayor. With cool weather — good for keeping computer temperatures down — and an abundance of inexpensive electricity from a top energy-producing state, Wyoming’s capital has become a hub of computing power. The city has been home to Microsoft data centers since 2012. An $800 million data center announced last year by Facebook parent company Meta Platforms is nearing completion. The latest data center, a joint effort between regional energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe, would begin at 1.8 gigawatts of electricity and be scalable to 10 gigawatts. A gigawatt can power as many as 1 million homes. But that’s more homes than Wyoming has people. The least populated state, Wyoming, has about 590,000 people. But this proposed data center is so big, it would have its own dedicated energy from gas generation and renewable sources. 