Tuesday, Doña Ana County Commissioners unanimously authorized county managers and legal to notify Project Jupiter entities of a potential breach of IRB agreements.
County commissioners met in closed session for about two and a half hours to discuss several topics including Project Jupiter IRBs during Tuesdays Board of County Commissioners meeting.
After returning from closed session, Commission Chair, Manuel Sanchez made a motion to authorize county managers and legal to provide notice to Project Jupiter entities of a potential breach in IRB agreements "regarding their proposed power generation plant and engage in discussions to identify a potential path forward working with Doña Ana County."
No additional details were provided. The meeting ended after the motion was approved.
After public comments, Sanchez said that according to the IRB agreement, "All the generation for the facility will be onsite through the micro-grid and hence no connection to El Paso Electric would be allowed."
These requirements are enforceable through the IRB, he said.
According to the IRB and Community Benefits Agreement, "Project Jupiter will power itself with an onsite microgrid system," and "Will not impact existing customers’ power reliability or costs."
At the Oct. 13th BOCC meeting, Oracle representatives gave a presentation to commissioners where they announced a proposed Energy Service Agreement with El Paso Electric to provide emergency backup power, and to support construction at the data center. In turn, Oracle plans to pay $10 million for power annually for 10 years regardless of the energy used to help offset costs that would be paid by El Paso Electric's customers in New Mexico.
Oracle sent out a news release related to the proposal 30 minutes before the meeting began which caused pushback from commissioners.
The data center will be powered by an onsite microgrid campus using up to 2.45 GW of Bloom Energy Fuel Cell capacity, according to Bloom Energy. On Oct. 14th Oracle and Yucca Growth Infrastructure announced changes to the design of the microgrid that could cut emissions by 35%. The change consists of limiting the MW used by the fuel cells.
A public hearing for YGI and Bloom Energy's Air Quality Permit is set to start Dec. 7th in Sunland Park.
We reached out to the county and Oracle for comment. We will update the story when and if they respond.
