Ronald W. Erdrich/Reporter-News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images/Reuters
- Oracle and OpenAI’s Stargate data center in Shackelford County, Texas, will be powered by an on-site natural gas plant.
- Voltagrid, partner of site developer Vantage Data Centers, is building the 700-megawatt microgrid.
- Faced with long lines for grid connection, data centers are starting to build their own power plants.
Oracle and OpenAI’s next big AI bet for Project Stargate is literally off the grid.
The companies have plans for a new data center in Shackelford County, Texas, that will be powered by hundreds of natural gas generators, bypassing the strained U.S. power grid so it can come online faster.
The project illustrates how the race to build AI infrastructure has reshaped the energy industry nearly overnight. The practice of data centers going “off grid” or “behind the meter” (the energy industry’s term for generating one’s own power) is emerging as a new effect of the AI race in the US. Tech giants, unwilling to wait years to connect to the grid, are turning to self-contained energy supplies to quickly meet the enormous electricity demands of artificial intelligence.
The first Stargate site in Abilene, Texas, a 40-minute drive from Shackelford County, is powered in part with its own fleet of natural gas generators. Elon Musk is using natural gas generators to power xAI’s Memphis data centers, and plans to build a private natural gas plant in Mississippi as a more permanent solution.
The new installation, known as a “microgrid,” will enable the site to generate its own electricity, eliminating the need for service from a local utility. This means the data center can bypass the bottlenecked public grid line and get up and running fast, possibly as early as 2026.
Plans for an “onsite, behind-the-meter, gas-powered microgrid” were revealed in document — titled “Oracle Fact Sheet” — on Stargate that was posted to the website of US Rep. Jodey Arrington. Arrington’s West Texas district includes the first Stargate data center in Abilene.
The document, classified as “internal” and “confidential,” and dated September 23, 2025 — the same day Oracle and OpenAI invited state and local politicians to Abilene for a site tour — contains previously unreported details about additional Stargate data centers, including development partners and energy plans.
Brett Hedges, a spokesperson for Arrington, said the document came from a “press kit” provided at the event. Oracle did not respond to Business Insider questions about the document.
OpenAI and Oracle have not publicly disclosed how they plan to power the Stargate data center in Shackelford County.
OpenAI declined to comment for this story, but confirmed that Vantage Data Centers is its development partner for the site.
Vantage Data Centers and energy startup Voltagrid were identified in the “fact sheet” as Oracle’s development partners for the Shackelford County site. Both companies confirmed their involvement in the project to Business Insider.
A spokesperson for Voltagrid said the microgrid will ultimately deliver 1.4 gigawatts of compute capacity to the data center. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said he wants to scale Stargate to more than 10 gigawatts.
Vantage first said in August that it is developing the Shackelford County “mega-campus,” though it did not name a tenant. Dubbed “Frontier,” the mega-campus will house 10 data center buildings totaling 3.7 million square feet.
Public documents filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show that Voltagrid has been approved to operate 210 industrial gas generators with a combined capacity of 700 megawatts on land leased near the site. The registration documents for air quality permits are for the first phase of construction, Voltagrid told Business Insider.
Nearly all of the generators will be used for primary power, according to the documents, while 13 engines will be used for backup energy in emergency situations.
The generators are made by Jenbacher, an Austrian engine company.
The boom in data center construction, fueled by Big Tech’s ambitious AI plans, has led to a backlog of data centers awaiting connection to the power grid. In some cases, the wait could take up to five years, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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