The developers of the first Project Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas, plan to build a natural gas plant on the site, according to public filings reviewed by Business Insider.
OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank have thus far provided little detail on the potential energy use of Stargate, a joint venture formed to spend $500 billion on AI infrastructure in the US and announced last week by the White House.
The filings said that once operational, the plant could produce up to 360.5 megawatts of power at any given time, up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. One MW of electricity can power 250 residential customers during peak hours, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said. This means 360.5 MW is enough to power 90,000 homes in Texas — roughly double the amount of households in Abilene, according to the US Census Bureau.
These permit applications were filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality by a consulting firm working on behalf of AI cloud startup Crusoe. Crusoe is the owner of Project Ludicrous, the $1.1 billion data center project in Abilene widely thought to be the first Stargate location.
An initial application to permit 10 simple-cycle natural gas turbines under Title V of the Clean Air Act — at a site that shares an address with Project Ludicrous — is under review by the TCEQ.
The application said the facility housing the turbines will be used for "primary and backup power" for "data centers and computing. " Its use will be "onsite only," meaning the power generated by the turbines won't be available to the local grid.
Half of the turbine models come from GE Vernova, and the other half come from Solar Turbines, a subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc. The turbines are designed to be installed and operational quickly, and some GE models can be up and running in as little as two weeks, the company has said in marketing materials.
A permit allowing diesel-fired backup generators to run at the site is already in effect.
Developing the plant is expected to cost half a billion dollars, a city document viewed by BI said.
Andrew Schmitt, a spokesperson for Crusoe, the startup developing Project Ludicrous, declined to comment on the record about the natural gas plant. He directed BI to the company's previous comments about the site's power, which "includes both on-and off-site renewable resources, including surrounding wind developments and a potential future large-scale onsite solar installation."
OpenAI and Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Stargate will need lots of power
Morgan Stanley analysts on Friday estimated the entire Stargate project would require about 15 gigawatts.
That amount of power would be spread out across multiple locations, though the number of Stargate sites and how much power each would use is not publicly known. Some reports in the media and from financial analysts have indicated that Stargate sites could have a power demand of 5 GW, an amount drawn from a document said to have been pitched by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to the Biden administration, first reported by Bloomberg.
If that is the case, then 360.5 MW, the capacity of the natural gas turbines at Project Ludicrous, would make up a tiny fraction — less than 1% — of how much power the site will ultimately need.
Some of that power will come from a substation, allowing Project Ludicrous to draw power from the local electric grid. The data center is located on land owned by energy tech company Lancium, which has built a 200 MW substation on the site, a company spokesperson told Business Insider. The company's website said it plans to increase capacity to five times that amount in 2025.
The race to develop AI infrastructure has caused electricity demand in the US to soar dramatically for the first time in two decades. Data center electricity use could triple in the US by 2028, according to the latest report from the Department of Energy.
The recent launch of DeepSeek's AI models has raised questions about AI infrastructure spending in the US, as the Chinese model is 20 to 40 times cheaper than OpenAI's and can run more efficiently with fewer chips.
Do you work in or have knowledge of the data center industry and have insight to share? Get in touch with this reporter at ethomas@insider.com or reach out via the encrypted messaging app Signal at +1-929-524-6924.
