PROGRESS: Construction of Facebook-Adobe wind farm in Dixon County underway

WAKEFIELD, Neb. — Facebook and Adobe struck a friendly deal to share power generated from the Rattlesnake Creek Wind Project, developer of the wind farm under construction in Northeast Nebraska announced.

Rattlesnake Creek is a $430 million wind farm being built southwest of Sioux City across a 32,000-acre area in Dixon County between the towns of Allen, Emerson and Wakefield by Enel Green Power North America Inc., a subsidiary of the multinational Enel Group.

Under a previous agreement, Enel agreed to sell 200 megawatts of the 320 megawatts Rattlesnake Creek will eventually produce to Facebook to power its new data center in Papillion, Nebraska, near Omaha.

With the new agreement, Enel will sell 10 megawatts of power to Adobe from 2019 to 2028; in 2029, all the power generated by Rattlesnake Creek will be sold exclusively to Facebook.

By purchasing all of its power from Rattlesnake Creek, the social media giant’s new data center will run exclusively on renewable energy.

“Powering our data centers with 100 percent clean and renewable energy is not just a goal for Facebook, it is a requirement of our business,” Bobby Hollis, director of global energy at Facebook, said in a release.

In the same release, Antonio Cammisecra, head of Enel’s Global Renewable Energies Division, said the company was excited it was able to find a solution that suited Adobe and Facebook.

“Agreements like these are a prime example of our ability to work collaboratively with corporate customers on tailor-made solutions, managing multiple off-takers with different energy supply volume needs,” he said.

Rattlesnake Creek is expected to go online by the end of this year but won’t be fully operational until 2019. About 300 construction jobs were created for the project and 12 permanent jobs will be created.

Once operational, the 101-turbine wind farm will distribute $80 million in property tax and landowner payments over the first 20 years of its existence and be one of the largest wind farms in Nebraska, according to Enel.