Meta's $27B Louisiana Data Center Triggers 7.5-GW Grid Expansion as Turner-DPR-Mortenson Team Breaks Ground on 4-Million-Sq-Ft Campus Meta Platforms has struck a landmark infrastructure agreement with Entergy Louisiana to power its planned $27-billion data center in Richland Parish, a facility the company says could scale to 5 gigawatts of demand and become its largest data center ever built. The deal would trigger one of the most significant expansions of power generation and transmission infrastructure in Louisiana's history, raising both economic promise and financial risk questions for state electricity customers.

A Campus Built for Scale

Meta's planned Hyperion data-center campus in Richland Parish is designed as a 4-million-square-foot, multi-building facility. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described the site as large enough to cover a significant portion of Manhattan.

Early site work is already underway, and the project is expected to require substantial local infrastructure upgrades, including road, water, and utility improvements. Meta has selected a joint construction team of Turner Construction, DPR Construction, and Mortenson to build the campus. According to DPR, the project includes one network data center, four support structures, and extensive modular electrical and mechanical systems.

Peak onsite employment is expected to exceed 5,000 workers at any one point during construction.

The Power Agreement With Entergy

Under the agreement between Meta and Entergy Louisiana, Meta will finance seven new natural-gas power plants totaling more than 5.2 gigawatts of generation capacity. The deal also includes approximately 240 miles of 500-kilovolt transmission lines and battery storage installations across multiple locations. Meta has additionally committed to helping fund up to 2.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy resources and has signed a memorandum of understanding with Entergy to explore future nuclear development.

The seven new gas units still require approval from the Louisiana Public Service Commission before they can proceed. Combined with three gas plants that were previously approved by state regulators and are already under construction, the data center project would ultimately draw power from 10 gas-fired units with a combined capacity of 7.5 gigawatts. According to Fortune, that represents an increase equivalent to more than 30 percent of Louisiana's current electrical grid.

Entergy has said the deal is structured so that Meta pays its full cost of service. The utility also said the arrangement would deliver approximately $2 billion in customer savings over 20 years, on top of $650 million in previously announced benefits to ratepayers.

Financial Risk and Ratepayer Concerns

Despite Entergy's characterization of the deal's benefits, the project has drawn scrutiny over what could happen to Louisiana electricity customers if Meta's long-term power demand ultimately falls short of projections. The Wall Street Journal reported that those concerns reflect a broader national debate over rapid data-center growth, which has placed strain on electrical grids across the country and contributed to rising electricity costs in multiple regions.

The financial structure of the Hyperion project adds another layer of complexity. On the same day that Louisiana regulators approved the original power plan last year, Meta reached a separate agreement with Blue Owl Capital in which the private-equity firm took majority ownership of the Hyperion facility. Under that arrangement, Meta became a tenant with the option to exit its lease every four years.

Fortune noted that the 10 gas-fired units carry 15-year contracts but have operational lifespans of up to 40 years, a gap that could potentially leave ratepayers responsible for remaining infrastructure costs if Meta's demand drops after those contracts expire.

A National Conversation on Tech-Funded Infrastructure

The Louisiana project is emerging against the backdrop of a national reckoning over how major technology companies should bear the costs of the power infrastructure their data centers require. Earlier this month, a group of major technology firms — including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Oracle, OpenAI, and xAI — pledged at a White House event to fund their data-center power needs and invest in local grid upgrades. However, analysts told the Wall Street Journal that the commitments lacked detail and enforcement mechanisms, raising questions about how quickly those pledges would translate into tangible relief for communities experiencing grid stress and rising utility costs.

The Louisiana deal, structured with Meta directly financing the new generation and transmission infrastructure, represents one concrete attempt to operationalize that kind of commitment, though critics note the ratepayer exposure provisions could undercut its protective intent.

Louisiana's Grid in the Balance

The scale of what is being proposed for Louisiana is difficult to overstate. A 7.5-gigawatt buildout of new generation capacity would exceed 30 percent of the state's existing grid, according to Fortune's reporting on the project. That level of infrastructure investment, tied to the demands of a single corporate tenant, represents both an economic development opportunity and a structural dependency that state regulators will have to weigh carefully as the Louisiana Public Service Commission considers approval of the seven pending natural-gas units.

The Richland Parish campus, if fully realized at 5 gigawatts of power demand, would stand as Meta's largest data center in the world. The construction effort alone, managed by the Turner-DPR-Mortenson joint team, is among the most complex and labor-intensive data-center projects currently underway in the United States, with peak employment on site projected to surpass 5,000 workers during the build-out phase.