Apex Clean Energy and Meta announced Wednesday that they have expanded their joint portfolio to 1.2 GW with the addition of a power purchase agreement for Apex’s 144-MW Starling Solar project in Texas.
Meta will receive “exclusive rights to all environmental attributes associated with energy” from the project, including all renewable energy credits, Apex said in a release. Apex did not respond to a request for comment on the nature of the PPA.
Starling Solar will be developed in Gonzales County, Texas, and is expected to begin commercial operations in 2027, according to the release, which said Apex and Meta have a combined portfolio of seven projects across Texas, Virginia, Illinois, Kansas and Iowa.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas queue report from August lists the project’s anticipated commercial operation date as Jan. 28, 2028, and says that the project has completed its security screening study and entered the full interconnection study phase.
“The 144 MW project will add to the local grid that would not have been built without Meta’s commitment and reflects Apex’s focus on delivering interconnected, ready-to-build capacity on the accelerated timelines large-load customers require,” the release said.
Meta has invested considerably in data centers and generation resources in Texas, including over $10 billion in a 1-GW data center in El Paso, and signing a PPA with ENGIE to purchase 100% of the output from a 600-MW solar project in Stonewall County “to support its data center operations.”
Apex previously announced transactions with Meta in 2019, when the two reached a PPA for the 200-MW Aviator Wind East project in Coke County, Texas, and in 2023 when Meta agreed to an environmental attribute purchase agreement for the full capacity of the 195-MW Angelo Solar project in Tom Green County, Texas.
