Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
They picked Pecos.
Not Dallas. Not Houston. Not somewhere with lobbyists and lawyers and people who know how to fight back. They picked a small ranching town in Reeves County, West Texas, deep in the Permian Basin, where the land is cheap and the gas is everywhere and the county judge gets his picture taken with the CEO and calls it progress.
I know the Permian Basin well.
Chevron will fuel a massive Microsoft data center in West Texas with natural gas under a 20-year agreement. The data center, called Project Kilby, is expected to consume nearly 2.7 gigawatts of electricity. That is roughly the power needed to run about 2 million homes.
One data center. Two million homes worth of power. Twenty years.
The project sits near Pecos in the Permian Basin on a site designed as a behind-the-meter installation, co-located directly with Microsoft’s data center campus. It bypasses the public ERCOT grid entirely. First power is targeted for 2028. The initial phase carries an estimated cost of around $7 billion.
They built their own power plant. For one building. And they wired it so your grid never sees a watt of it. Unless, of course, they decide to sell you the excess. On their terms.
The site spans more than 2,000 acres in Reeves County. GE Vernova turbines will account for the bulk of the plant’s output, supplemented by units from Solar Turbines, a Caterpillar subsidiary.
Two thousand acres. In a county where people ranch cattle and pump oil and have been doing both for a hundred years.
Microsoft says it will be a good neighbor. Microsoft says the power plant will eventually stabilize the grid. Microsoft says Pecos will benefit.
They always say that.
The turbines include noise and light impact mitigations as well as selective catalytic reduction systems that reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. Not eliminate. Reduce.
Not eliminate. Reduce. Read that carefully.
The machine is coming to West Texas. It picked a small town, made big promises, and signed a twenty year contract before anyone could ask the right questions.
This is Cricketpocalypse.
