Check this out: https://www.ketk.com/news/local-news/30-ai-data-centers-to-be-built-at-sulphur-springs-campus/

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East Texas [Sulphur Springs] will soon be home to a massive 1,677-acre AI data center campus that's planned to open in September of 2026.

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The campus development is planned to feature eight individual 100-megawatt(MW) data center buildings during the first phase of construction in 2026. By the end of the third phase of construction in 2028, MSB plans to have a 3,000 MW capacity for data processing across 30 identical 100 MW data center buildings on the campus.

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The individual data centers will each be 278,000 square-foot buildings. MSB said the data centers will use a combination of geothermal energy, solar power, batteries and natural gas with carbon capture in order to help reduce the campus' carbon footprint.

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Always a bit amused by the large Tesla Supercharger bank in downtown SS and now this. Of all places, Sulphur Springs trying to be some kind of future tech hub.

There is already a giant one near Abilene and 3 more going in Shackleford county. Those are part of the $500 billion Stargate project. These are massive buildouts. First Abilene one was $7 bn.

They are on the ERCOT grid. The price of electricity just went up.

flashplayer said:

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I bleed maroon said:

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This is exciting for Texas!

• This will greatly increase our tax base (OOPS - we gave it all away with up-front incentives)
• This will create a lasting huge number of jobs (oops, the Abilene one is only a few dozen jobs, post-construction)
• This will take advantage of our world-class electrical grid (oops.)
• This will hasten the development of Texas leadership in alternative energy sources (oops, Trump hates most of them, and is trying his best to halt these)
• This won't impact our current water scarcity issues (oops, keep watching)

Hey - I hope it works out, but I'm not sure it's the feather in our cap that we seem to think it is.

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Au contraire, mon frere

When we secede, all your data center are belong to us.

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You know, as a Texan, there's something to this. Having the widest variety of industries (like the new stock exchanges, auto industry, and crypto stuff) located here prepares us well for a version of the America Texas First movement. We can always still go to Colorado to ski and Florida for beaches, but we pretty much got the rest covered right here!

Water likely not an issue for this. Now, if they tried to do that down here in the Corpus area then that would be the dumbest business decision ever made.

We have a decent chance of running out of water next year and moving to odd days for even bathing.

Can't wait.

YouBet said:

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I bleed maroon said:

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YouBet said:

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Water likely not an issue for this. Now, if they tried to do that down here in the Corpus area then that would be the dumbest business decision ever made.

We have a decent chance of running out of water next year and moving to odd days for even bathing.

Can't wait.

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Last time I checked, Abilene isn't exactly set on the water sitch, either.

Bathwater rationing in Corpus - - and we thought that town stunk before?

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We aren't in Corpus proper but are impacted by it. Mind numbing idiocy by Corpus City Council. They are California stupid with their resource decisions.

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Yeah - it's gonna be a problem statewide for many years to come, from Houston getting too much to West Texas getting water-robbed by Mexico. Thank goodness I live in Austin, where the local government is well-prepared and totally rational. I think we're worse off than practically everywhere.

So how can the average dude like myself make money off this? Too late to buy property in and around Sulfur Springs ?

NoahAg said:

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So how can the average dude like myself make money off this? Too late to buy property in and around Sulfur Springs ?

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Lotta land over there. Would find a local RE agent and start looking around. Downtown SS is actually pretty kickass and one of the coolest downtown squares you will find in the state. They've done a great job revitalizing it over the last several years.

My immediate family live there now.

YouBet said:

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NoahAg said:

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So how can the average dude like myself make money off this? Too late to buy property in and around Sulfur Springs ?

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Lotta land over there. Would find a local RE agent and start looking around. Downtown SS is actually pretty kickass and one of the coolest downtown squares you will find in the state. They've done a great job revitalizing it over the last several years.

My immediate family live there now.

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Yeah, very cool downtown. My dad lives about 30 minutes away.

NoahAg said:

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So how can the average dude like myself make money off this? Too late to buy property in and around Sulfur Springs ?

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Take a trip to Abilene, and check out where the cash is flowing. Basically anything that serves the needs of thousands of temporary construction workers. Also, trucking. Anyone with a dump truck, flatbed, or tanker within 100 miles won the lottery.

Is noise still an issue with these facilities once they're up and running?

Ronald_Ragin said:

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This is where our domestic LNG supply should be going, to fuel these large campuses, instead of shipping overseas. At least for a viable portion of the load. Make these campuses self generate with behind the meter turbines. My company provides this service on similar applications already via delivered LNG & CNG and has for 20 years.

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That is my understanding, that these new data centers are using a combo of turbines and recip engines as their prime power.

wessimo said:

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High probability this data center bubble is going to burst bigly. Hundreds of billions getting pumped into it, requires huge amounts of energy, and no one has actually figured out how these things are going to pay for themselves, much less make a profit.

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In the article I posted, I'm not sure who the customers are going to be because it doesn't say. I guess this is a build it and they will come strategy.

NoahAg said:

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So how can the average dude like myself make money off this? Too late to buy property in and around Sulfur Springs ?

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Bloom Energy, the company mentioned in the article? Its stock is up 4x from July.

I bleed maroon said:

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YouBet said:

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Water likely not an issue for this. Now, if they tried to do that down here in the Corpus area then that would be the dumbest business decision ever made.

We have a decent chance of running out of water next year and moving to odd days for even bathing.

Can't wait.

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Last time I checked, Abilene isn't exactly set on the water sitch, either.

Bathwater rationing in Corpus - - and we thought that town stunk before?

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They are using a closed loop water system that will annually use less than 1 days use of the city.

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Something that has been on the minds of many Abilene residents is the amount of water these centers traditionally use. However, with the Abilene data center using a closed-loop water system, Abilene Mayor Weldon Hurt explained that the water consumption for the new data center is a small percentage compared to the average city use.

"We're talking about 10 million gallons a year, roughly. Abilene uses between 21 and 24 million gallons a day for the citizens of Abilene and our wholesale customers," Hurt explained.

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harge57 said:

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I bleed maroon said:

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YouBet said:

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Water likely not an issue for this. Now, if they tried to do that down here in the Corpus area then that would be the dumbest business decision ever made.

We have a decent chance of running out of water next year and moving to odd days for even bathing.

Can't wait.

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Last time I checked, Abilene isn't exactly set on the water sitch, either.

Bathwater rationing in Corpus - - and we thought that town stunk before?

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They are using a closed loop water system that will annually use less than 1 days use of the city.

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Something that has been on the minds of many Abilene residents is the amount of water these centers traditionally use. However, with the Abilene data center using a closed-loop water system, Abilene Mayor Weldon Hurt explained that the water consumption for the new data center is a small percentage compared to the average city use.

"We're talking about 10 million gallons a year, roughly. Abilene uses between 21 and 24 million gallons a day for the citizens of Abilene and our wholesale customers," Hurt explained.

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I applaud this effort. However, that's still the equivalent of adding 1700 people per year to their water infrastructure needs. It's not inconsequential.

1. The data center would be stupid to be fully powered by ERCOT. Looks like they have more behind the meter cogen in the design, which means less demand on ERCOT.
2. The demand can certainly increase rates for general population consumer due to demand cycle pricing unless the tariff structure gets revised to accommodate the center. Even still demand, rather lack of supply, could be problematic for the general population consumer.
3. Water is a huge issue. There are some contained cooling technologies but those are not fully deployed or ready to be scaled to cool 8 100mw facilities.
4. Just being on Texags, watching Netflix, and checking your Facebook creates a demand for these data centers. Our entire lives are online. The quicker speed you want for internet and the more demand you have for connectivity (washer and dryer with wifi, smart appliances, smart thermostat, etc) the more demand there is for these. Now think of it at a global scale.
5. Just a few years ago, the data center housed IT racks that had a demand of 10kw, today, those racks demand 240kw. Huge change due to the chip processing technologies. The upcoming NVDIA chip will double this.

Ronald_Ragin said:

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This is where our domestic LNG supply should be going, to fuel these large campuses, instead of shipping overseas. At least for a viable portion of the load. Make these campuses self generate with behind the meter turbines. My company provides this service on similar applications already via delivered LNG & CNG and has for 20 years.

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We literally have enough natural gas to do both. Why should it go here or there when the market will find the supply to meet the demand.

Bingo. Location is about land availability, interconnection for power availability, access to water, and ease of permitting.

It used to be that Dupont would build a plant where a river, RR and town crossed paths.

Data centers, at least on the high level, follow the same idea. Access to the actual internet, cheap land and power.

The issue with on site gen sets is noise and pollution. You'll need an air permit to run them. While you have "friendly" regulators (mount up!), you'll have to follow BACT. If the sites doesn't keep up with those, I could see regulators shutting down those generators. Which would turn the site dark.

~egon

Ronald_Ragin said:

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This is where our domestic LNG supply should be going, to fuel these large campuses, instead of shipping overseas.

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Exporting LNG improves our trade balance. We can run data centers on the gigawatts of renewable energy that can't (practically) be exported abroad.

TriAg2010 said:

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Ronald_Ragin said:

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This is where our domestic LNG supply should be going, to fuel these large campuses, instead of shipping overseas.

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Exporting LNG improves our trade balance. We can run data centers on the gigawatts of renewable energy that can't (practically) be exported abroad.

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Except at night when the wind is low, or during cloudy days with low wind. Or even when the wind is blowing too fast during a storm.

Thunderstruck xx said:

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TriAg2010 said:

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Ronald_Ragin said:

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This is where our domestic LNG supply should be going, to fuel these large campuses, instead of shipping overseas.

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Exporting LNG improves our trade balance. We can run data centers on the gigawatts of renewable energy that can't (practically) be exported abroad.

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Except at night when the wind is low, or during cloudy days with low wind. Or even when the wind is blowing too fast during a storm.

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That's fine. Data centers are perfect candidates for load response. Bitcoin miners have been doing this for years and it's an important revenue stream for them. When electricity is scarce (i.e. expensive), networks allow us to move CPU workloads to where it isn't.

It's also lost on most people just how much energy storage has been added to the Texas grid in the last two years. There were 5.5 gigawatts of batteries charging at the peak this afternoon.

We have an abundance of both A and B, which are totally interchangeable. You have a buyer for A and not B. It's intuitively obvious you sell A to the buyer and then use B for yourself.

Recommended reading: https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/

A Canadian sci-fi writer/blogger?

I don't disagree with his premise that AI is over hyped - we're probably at the apex of the "Gartner hype cycle". It's still not going anywhere and the consumption of cloud services is only going to continue increasing. My source? My job.

The "Gartner hype cycle"

That's funny!