Microsoft’s next West Texas data center will come with its own power plant. The company is planning a roughly 2,500-megawatt campus in Pecos, in Reeves County, paired with a $7 billion natural gas facility that Chevron and Engine No. 1 will build to feed it directly, one of the largest behind-the-meter power arrangements ever tied to a single tech tenant.
Project Scope
The campus spans about 7,000 acres and is designed to scale in phases toward roughly 2.5 gigawatts of IT load. Under the deal, Chevron’s power venture signs a 20-year agreement to supply the site through a behind-the-meter connection, meaning the generation sits on the same side of the meter as the load and skips the grid interconnection queue. Microsoft expects the campus to start coming online around 2027. Chevron targets a final investment decision by the end of 2026 and first power in 2028.
Why It Matters
The grid can’t keep up with AI. Interconnection queues stretch years across much of the country, so hyperscalers are building or buying dedicated generation rather than waiting on utilities. Bolting 2.67 gigawatts of on-site gas to a single campus is a blunt answer to that bottleneck, and a contested one given the emissions math. For contractors, it marks where the work is heading: data centers and the power plants now attached to them.
Project Team & Details
| Developer | Microsoft |
|---|
| Owner / Client | Microsoft |
|---|
| Consultants | Chevron (On-site Power)
Engine No. 1 (Power Development) |
|---|
| Status | Planned |
|---|
| Funding Source | Private |
|---|
