ON-PREM<\/p>\n
The air turns brown when bit barns come to town \u2026 deep in the heart of Texas<\/p>\n
Never mind the fact that datacenter environmental concerns have come under growing scrutiny across the United States. Microsoft has just inked a deal with fossil fuel giant Chevron to supply one of the largest single-capacity additions to its datacenter fleet with 2.67 gigawatts of natural gas power for a full two decades.<\/p>\n
Chevron said<\/a> today that it signed a two-decade power purchase agreement with Microsoft through its subsidiary Energy Forge One to supply 2.67 GW of power for a new datacenter project in West Texas dubbed Project Kilby. The natural gas turbines to be constructed on the datacenter\u2019s site will sit behind-the-meter (Microsoft gets access to the power without it flowing through the grid first) and will be \u201camong the largest co-located natural gas power and data center developments in the U.S.,\u201d according to Chevron.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s own press release<\/a> on the matter, which doesn\u2019t mention Chevron or Energy Forge One by name but does admit the new facility \u201cwill operate with a co-located natural gas power facility,\u201d identified Pecos as the West Texas location where the bit barn will be built. The self-proclaimed birthplace of the rodeo is also a West Texas hub for agriculture and ranching, among other Texas-sized industries.<\/p>\n Microsoft confirmed to The Register that, despite it not mentioning Chevron in the announcement, the power purchase agreement does concern the Pecos facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n The facility will be \u201cone of the largest single-capacity additions\u201d to Microsoft\u2019s datacenter fleet \u201cin our history,\u201d according to Redmond\u2019s release, and the company is trying hard to lean into its desire to be a good neighbor to the people of Pecos as it spends the next few years building the massive facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t good neighbors care about air and water quality?<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that being a good neighbor isn\u2019t something you say,\u201d Microsoft wrote in an open letter<\/a> to the people of Pecos alongside its announcement of the new datacenter. \u201cIt\u2019s something you prove over time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That letter and the announcement take pains to point out all the good things Microsoft has done for the communities where it plunked down massive datacenters, and it wants the locals to know that the Pecos facility will be no different. Why, the very fact it\u2019s building multiple gigawatts of natural gas power for itself proves just that!\u00a0<\/p>\n Building its own energy infrastructure, says Microsoft, will prevent locals from having to pay more for power. Additionally, the company anticipates eventually connecting its turbines to the grid and serving as a broader energy source, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Chevron, the turbines being deployed for the Pecos datacenter include noise and light impact mitigations as well as \u201cselective catalytic reduction\u201d systems that reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. Not eliminate, mind you – just reduce.\u00a0<\/p>\n To get an idea of the scale of what Microsoft is planning to deploy with Chevron in Pecos, let\u2019s consider the gas turbine generators that xAI\u2019s Colossus AI datacenter installed in Memphis, Tennessee. That facility saw the installation of just 150 megawatts<\/a> of gas turbines – roughly one eighteenth the size of Microsoft\u2019s planned Pecos gas plant.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even at that small a scale, the xAI datacenter has still become the subject of a lawsuit<\/a> [PDF] alleging that the facility is belching way too much smog into local communities for the air to be healthy and calling for it to be shut down. Emissions mitigations or not, one can’t imagine the prairie sky around the Pecos datacenter will be as clear and high as it once was after the facility is completed.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth pointing out that some of the turbines being deployed to Pecos will be manufactured by the deceptively named Solar Turbines, which actually builds gas power systems. According to reports<\/a> and photographs<\/a> out of the xAI Memphis facility, Solar Turbines also supplied gas turbines for Colossus.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the water concerns<\/a>: Microsoft and Chevron both called attention to their plans to minimize water usage in Pecos, which lies in a part of Texas prone to drought and with limited access to fresh, potable water.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are also designing our operations to minimize reliance on freshwater sources by utilizing nonpotable water where possible,\u201d Microsoft noted. The company will rely on closed-loop cooling systems that will \u201csignificantly reduce water requirements.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As for the gas plant planned for the site, Chevron said that its facility will use \u201cnon-potable, brackish groundwater sources for power plant operations\u201d instead of freshwater, but that doesn\u2019t tell the whole story.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brackish groundwater, located in massive, salty, underground aquifers, is a major source of water for dry, dusty West Texas, and has been for some time<\/a>. Desalination of brackish groundwater has been suggested<\/a> [PDF] as a source of drinking water for the town and the surrounding region, raising questions about whether datacenters and gas power plants sucking it up to cool their jets are sustainable.\u00a0<\/p>\n Microsoft didn\u2019t want to answer any of the questions we put to it aside from confirming Chevron\u2019s press release related to the Pecos datacenter; Chevron didn\u2019t respond.\u00a0 \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ON-PREM The air turns brown when bit barns come to town \u2026 deep in the heart of Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-346769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}