AI's Urgent Need for Power Spurs the Return of Dirtier Gas Turbines

If Stargate's first AI data centre is completed next year as planned, the 900-acre site will need enough round-theclock electricity to support 300,000 homes. But securing that power isn't as simple as plugging into the grid.

- Bloomberg

Unlike arch rival Meta Platforms Inc., which Tuesday announced a 20-year deal to buy electricity from an Illinois nuclear plant, Stargate is relying on a technology that's largely been relegated to the sidelines of power production: small, single cycle natural gas turbines.

That's because the AI boom -which has supercharged electricity demand-is unfolding faster than power plants can be built and new grid connections established.

The venture by OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank is bridging that gap by stringing together a dozen of the small generators to power the Texas megafactory. Other city-sized data centres, including Elon Musk's xAI and Alphastruxure, a joint venture between Carlyle and Schneider Electric, are doing the same.