Cleanview logs 59 facilities not connected to the power grid
At the Grimes County Commissioners Court last week, Riley Trettel, a company lead for the Terafab development, described the strategy for the new power plant: “We’re bringing our own power. We are going to be building very large battery arrays in order to store energy.”
SpaceX’s use of natural gas generation began in the summer of 2024, when semi-trucks arrived in Memphis carrying mobile natural gas generators for the data center Musk called Colossus, the original facility of what was then his stand-alone xAI venture. A similar grid-connected project in a market like Virginia would have taken five-plus years, according to Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview. The Memphis project, which produced friction and legal conflicts with local residents and advocacy groups, let Musk build his first data center in four months.
The original Colossus campus now draws an estimated 300 megawatts from the grid and hosts almost 200 megawatts of turbines on site, according to satellite photos from May analyzed by Cleanview. About two-thirds of the mobile turbines have been removed. A second, larger Colossus campus along the Tennessee-Mississippi border relies on power from a Mississippi site where xAI, now a part of SpaceX, had 69 temporary turbines as of July 30, according to an agreement with local regulators obtained through a public records request.
On an August 4 investor call, Musk said SpaceX’s data center capacity could swell to around 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, or even reach 15 gigawatts. Amazon, the current leader, has around 13 gigawatts, according to Cleanview. SpaceX’s data centers this spring already accounted for three-quarters of the 2 gigawatts of data center power being generated behind-the-meter, or outside the U.S. electrical grid.
SpaceX has struck cloud computing deals with Anthropic, which is set to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month, and with Google, which is set to pay $920 million a month, the companies said.
Earlier this year, Musk personally acquired a Florida-based gas and diesel turbine manufacturer, according to a Federal Trade Commission filing. That deal valued the company at around $1 billion, according to a public filing from a company that had held an ownership stake. Musk has not commented on the purchase.
A decade ago, Musk called burning fossil fuels “the dumbest experiment in history,” warning they would eventually run out. Tesla’s stated mission at the time was to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” In recent years, Musk donated hundreds of millions of dollars to President Trump and Republicans, and Tesla removed the word “sustainable” from its tagline.
Some Musk supporters argue SpaceX’s investments can reduce energy use over the long term. The company has said it aspires to launch data centers in space, powered by solar energy. At a company all-hands meeting this week, streamed on his social network X, Musk said: “I do think that AI training will continue to be on the ground but AI inference, the day to day use of AI, will be in space.” To support orbital data centers, SpaceX said it plans to build a new solar factory in Bastrop, Texas.
Plugging into the power grid quickly isn’t possible with most AI-scale projects. A 1-gigawatt AI data center can consume roughly as much electricity as 1,000 Walmart stores, or the entire city of San Francisco. Delivering that much power to one location is difficult without major transmission investments, which take years. In many regions, new data centers may not be able to connect to the grid until the 2030s. Companies are opting to build their own on-site gas-powered plants that may not be connected to the power grid, part of a trend known as “Bring Your Own Power.”
Other major companies are taking similar approaches. Chevron recently struck a 20-year agreement to sell electricity to Microsoft in West Texas, fueled by Chevron’s gas production. Pipeline operator Williams Companies is building off-grid natural gas power generation for Meta in Ohio. Cleanview is tracking 59 data centers with on-site power generation not connected to the grid, with a combined capacity of about 90 gigawatts — roughly enough to power Texas on the hottest day of the year.
A recent McKinsey survey found that 65 percent of power industry respondents are planning to use on-site generation; of those, 64 percent said they would rely on natural gas.