Home Care In Stonewall, TX

Meta just signed more power purchase agreements (PPAs) with ENGIE North America, expanding their partnership to more than 1.3 gigawatts (GW) of solar across four projects in Texas. It’s just a shame the social media giant is also going big on gas plants in Louisiana to power its data centers at the same time.

The latest PPAs include ENGIE’s new 600-megawatt (MW) Swenson Ranch Solar project in Stonewall County, southeast of Lubbock. When it comes online in 2027, Swenson will become ENGIE’s largest solar farm within its 11 GW North American portfolio of solar, wind, and battery storage projects. Meta will buy 100% of Swenson’s power to run its US data centers.

ENGIE says the $900 million project will create over 350 construction jobs and generate over $158 million in tax revenue for Stonewall County and the local hospital district over its lifetime.

“Our objective is to bring reliable, cost-competitive power to the grid as rapidly as possible, and projects like Swenson demonstrate the importance of solar to meet the timely needs of our customers,” said Dave Carroll, ENGIE North America’s CEO and chief renewables officer.

Meta’s head of global energy, Urvi Parekh, said the expanded deal with ENGIE “enables us to continue matching 100% of our electricity use with clean and renewable energy to support our data center operations,” Parekh said.

Electrek’s Take

Meta isn’t exactly putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to matching 100% of its electricity use with clean energy. The social media giant is also building a $10 billion data center – one of the world’s largest – in Richland Parish, Louisiana, that’s going to be powered by three gas-powered plants, which utility Entergy will build especially for Meta, which is paying 50% of the costs. Those three plants will produce 2,262 MW of dirty fossil fuel power. For perspective, that’s nearly 10% of Entergy’s current energy capacity across four states.

So while the 1.3 GW of clean energy that ENGIE will produce in Texas for Meta is great, it doesn’t make up for the CO2 emissions it’s about to create with this dirty project it’s building in a lower-income farming community in Louisiana. It certainly isn’t for speed, because solar is the fastest to put up. Limited state oversight – and a 2024 state law that lets the company skip paying sales tax – likely helped Meta make that destructive decision.

Read more: Texas just became No 1 in the US for most utility-scale solar

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LUBBOCK, Texas -- Stone Harrington kicked a school-record five field goals and linebacker Jacob Rodriguez had two takeaways as No. 8 Texas Tech beat No. 7 BYU 29-7 on Saturday, holding the previously undefeated Cougars to a season-low 255 total yards in a game with Big 12 and playoff implications.

Behren Morton passed for 216 yards and threw a 9-yard touchdown to Caleb Douglas while Cameron Dickey ran for 121 yards and a 1-yard score for the Red Raiders (9-1, 6-1 Big 12), who played in their first top-10 matchup since 2008.

"I told the team we have another gear," Texas Tech Coach Joey McGuire said. "We can play better."

BYU (8-1, 5-1) had never played in such a game, though the teams could meet again in the Big 12 Championship Game four weeks from now in Arlington, Texas.

Harrington kicked field goals of 47, 39, 34, 29 and 27 yards.

Rodriguez, the FBS leader with seven forced fumbles, had an interception midway through the third period leading to Harrington's fourth field goal. He recovered a backward pass late in the fourth quarter that set up Harrington's final kick.

Texas Tech has gone from ranking 121st last season in the FBS allowing 34.8 points per game to fifth at 13.2 going into Saturday, then lowering that to 12.6.

"Yeah, we are a better (defensive) team than we were last year," Rodriguez said. "But ... we've still got a lot of things to clean up."

BYU dropped a 10-game winning streak dating back to last season. The Cougars avoided their first shutout since 2017 when Bear Bachmeier threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Chase Roberts midway through the fourth quarter.

The Cougars entered the game third in the FBS in turnover margin at plus-1.25. They lost two fumbles, threw an interception and muffed a punt.

Bachmeier was 23 of 38 passing for 188 yards. The true freshman also had two turnovers, the interception and backward pass for a fumble.

"A couple of passes and a muffed punt cost us, I think, 13 points," BYU Coach Kalani Sitake said. "Even after that, I thought we were going to be able to respond and make a game of it in the second half, but we weren't able to do that."

The Cougars went into play averaging 36.3 points and 434 yards per game. Its previous low offensive output this season was 332 yards in a 27-3 win over Stanford on Sept. 6.

Both teams have home games remaining against Central Florida, while the Cougars also play at Cincinnati -- the only other Big 12 team with one league loss -- after hosting TCU next week. The Red Raiders host Central Florida next week before an open date and then their regular-season finale at West Virginia.

BYU struggled on special teams early. The game's opening possession ended with a shanked 19-yard punt for the Cougars, and after Texas Tech went three-and-out they muffed a punt recovered at their 17 to set up Harrington's first field goal. Then in the second quarter, with the wind at his back, BYU kicker Will Ferrin missed wide left on a 51-yard field-goal attempt.