Trending
Enormous sources of energy are needed for anyone using Facebook, Instagram, What's App, or Muse – the latest product the data center cluster development is being required to meet the demand of consumers.
In fact, over the last 20 years, Meta has grown from a small social network connecting a few universities across the U.S. into several apps and novel hardware products like Meta glasses that serve over 3.6 billion users daily worldwide, said Etta Lockey, director of Commercial Energy Supply, Meta. Lockey was the closing keynote speaker at the recent 16th annual Marcellus Shale Coalition INSIGHT 2026 in Erie.
Alongside that product growth, Meta's infrastructure has significantly evolved from a small fleet of leased facilities to a massive, global network fleet of Meta-owned hyperscale data centers, 28 of which are located in the U.S. That scale is hard to overstate, Lockey noted.
To explain more about that expansion and demand for service, Lockey said when she first joined Meta in 2021 a large data center was maybe 100 or 200 megawatts.
"I sat across the table from Meta on some of its negotiations for its second data center in Prineville, Oregon," she said.
These were small data centers compared to what the discussion is today where Meta campuses are approaching hundreds and hundreds of megawatts and Meta's AI superclusters are at the gigawatt scale.
That shift is not just about bigger buildings, but it is reflecting a very fundamental change in what Meta is asking its infrastructure, she noted.
Electrons and the economy
As the business has been scaled upwards at the same time the energy infrastructure needed to support the business has become more constrained, Lockey remarked.
The expansion timelines that support it have simply not kept pace, she said, adding it means the gap between demand and grid readiness is the central challenge that Lockey's team works on every day.
Transparency required for successful partnerships, including community engagement
"None of that happens without a willingness from our partners to do things differently and to solve these challenges in real time," Lockey said.
It represents an innovative energy solution to deliver capacity at speed and at scale. Energy solutions, such as onsite generation, are helping to enable data center infrastructure development that is fueling not only AI but the entire economy.
"Everything that we access online from bank accounts, health records, video, navigation devices, all of it is supported with data center and network infrastructure," Lockey said.
U.S. national economic and security interests are best served when these data centers are located here in the U.S. an energy infrastructure is the backbone in everything that is being done.
Meta wants to grow it in ways that strengthen it but not strain it, she said.
However, in many regions the timeline to connect data centers to the grid stretches for years. Transformers, breakers, turbines, the supply chains behind all of them, are constrained, too. When a utility tells Meta that they are not able to meet the timeline for energization that is not a lack of will or desire or effort but it represents physics, procurement and a process catching up to really unprecedented demands experienced currently, Lockey said.
However, onsite generation gives Meta a bridge, she added. It lets Meta bring its capacity online quickly and reliably while permanent grid upgrades are permitted and built. When it is done right, when it is permitted rigorously, operated responsibly and paired with clean energy solutions it is a win for all involved, she said.
Prometheus
To that end, Lockey shared a bit about Meta's first gigawatt cluster – known as Prometheus – in New Albany, Ohio.
Once it is complete, it is going to deliver one (1) gigawatt of capacity across multiple data center buildings, to include leased facilities and rapid deployment structures.
This AI infrastructure is going to enhance Meta's existing AI experiences and help it enable new ones across a family of services – Facebook etc., she added.
The facility is going to deliver capacity on a single campus on a timeline that was required for this moment.
Such a project required Meta to rethink "everything," she said.
"Rethink from site selection, to substation design to how we stage construction," she added. At Prometheus, Meta used leased capacity alongside the build, rapid deployment structures to compute online faster, and deployed onsite generation to provide a fast access to power.
What made Prometheus a success and how it can be replicated in other places include a marriage of strong partnerships with utilities, energy developers and energy producers.
Other reasons cited by Lockey for Meta success:
• A commitment to renewable energy and sustainability goals.
• Ongoing support and engagement with communities where data centers are located.
• Close work with utilities and energy partners often years and years in advance of a data center coming online. That includes identifying opportunities for onsite generation, particularly where grid timelines are constrained and where generation fueled by natural gas is necessary to support grid reliability.
• Meta has been fortunate to have strong partnerships with energy developers, such as Williams, a leading natural gas infrastructure company. Working with Williams Meta was able to build onsite generation behind the meter that directly serves the Prometheus campus. Williams, like Meta, is committed to bringing clean and reliable energy while supporting economic growth and doing so while going through the same rigorous permitting process for any infrastructure project.
• What that meant on the ground is new power, built by Ohio workers, and not paid for by Ohio ratepayers. Behind the meter is a proven model in Ohio, and allows growth to continue. It is this kind of partnership between energy developers, data center developers and the state that allows for this level of transformational and critical infrastructure to get built at scale and at speed.
• Ohio has shown this model can work at scale.
• Growth can pay for growth, new load can bring its own power, its own infrastructure investment and does not shift costs to families and small businesses.
• Meta committed to minimizing the environmental impact of its data centers.
• Meta matches 100 % of its annual electricity usage with renewable energy since 2020. It has contracted for over 30 gigawatts of clean energy onto grids across 27 states in the U.S. Meta maintains it is not a legacy program that was set aside while AI growth accelerated. It is the foundation that Meta built on.
• When Meta deploys onsite generation it is counted, supported in its sustainability reports and continues to add new clean energy to the grid at a pace to keep up with growth.