March 27 (Reuters) – Utility Entergy said Meta Platforms will pay its full cost of service for the planned hyperscale data center in northeast Louisiana under a revised agreement.
Shares of the utility were up 4.8% in early trading on Friday.
The agreement is expected to deliver nearly $2 billion in customer savings over 20 years, the company said, in addition to the $650 million announced last year.
Meta had disclosed plans to invest about $10 billion in a hyperscale data center in Richland Parish, northeast Louisiana, a project the Facebook parent unveiled in late 2024.
Big technology companies are increasingly partnering with utilities to power the rapid expansion of data centers to cater to the surging demand for artificial intelligence tools and cloud computing.
Entergy Louisiana, which received the state’s regulatory approval last year for investments tied to the project, said it plans to carry out a major build-out of generation, transmission and storage infrastructure.
This includes seven new natural gas-fired power plants with capacity of more than 5,200 megawatts, new high-voltage transmission lines, battery storage and nuclear power upgrades.
(Reporting by Sumit Saha in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)