Lydian's 600 MWh Utah Battery Goes Live to Back Meta Data Center

Lydian Energy has brought its 150 MW/600 MWh Faraday battery storage system in Utah County, Utah, into commercial operation. The project adds four hours of dispatchable capacity behind Meta's Eagle Mountain data center. The developer, backed by Excelsior Energy Capital, announced the milestone on Nov. 10, Energy-Storage.news reported.

The standalone lithium iron phosphate system operates under a Schedule 34 agreement with Rocky Mountain Power. Schedule 34 is the utility's green tariff, which lets large customers pay for new clean energy built specifically for them. The battery delivers its storage capacity to PacifiCorp under a long-term energy storage agreement.

The arrangement extends an existing Meta-PacifiCorp relationship. Meta already buys the energy and environmental attributes of the neighbouring 525 MWac Faraday Solar plant under a 20-year PacifiCorp contract on the same tariff. The new battery now pairs firm storage with that generation.

How fast was the build?

Lydian went from mobilization to commercial operation in about ten months. Construction continued through a June wildfire near the site, the company said. The battery occupies about eight acres next to the solar plant and shares its substation and interconnection, limiting incremental grid infrastructure.

The project formed part of a $689 million financing package led by CIBC and MUFG, announced in February. At that time, Lydian described Faraday Phase 1 as a 150 MW/733 MWh system. Energy-Storage.news reports the operating project at 600 MWh.

What comes next at the site?

Lydian is developing Faraday BESS 2 at the same location. The second phase would add up to 375 MW/1,500 MWh of capacity, with a targeted in-service date in the fourth quarter of 2028. That would more than triple storage capacity at the complex serving the Meta load.

The expansion lands in a shifting political environment for data center construction. Meta said last week that local backlash after the midterms will make new U.S. data centers harder to build. Storage projects tied to existing facilities, such as Faraday, sidestep some of that friction because they reinforce capacity at sites already in service.

The Faraday commissioning shows utilities and hyperscalers pairing batteries directly with dedicated solar generation under green tariffs to firm data center load. A second decision point arrives in 2028, when Faraday BESS 2 would test whether that model scales.