(Bloomberg) -- Intersect Power, a clean-energy developer backed by private equity firm TPG Inc., is in talks with technology companies to build two enormous data center sites in Texas, the latest sign that the race to develop artificial intelligence continues to heat up.
Intersect is marketing two locations in the Texas panhandle, one capable of supporting a three-gigawatt data center and another that could host a one-gigawatt facility, Intersect Chief Executive Officer Sheldon Kimber said in an interview. Intersect is in talks about the sites with big hyperscalers who want to train AI models, he said, declining to name the companies. A gigawatt is typically enough to power 250,000 homes in Texas.
“It’s the Disneyland of energy,” he said of the state. The wind and the sun in Texas can power the sites about 70% of the time, he said, with the grid or an on-site plant fueled by natural gas able to provide the rest. “We’re essentially going to be building microgrids that interact with the grid, and at a gigawatt scale.”
Remote areas of the US, including parts of Texas, are attracting attention from the world’s biggest tech firms as they pursue the electricity generation and space they need to build data centers that power AI. Intersect partnered with Google and TPG Rise Climate in December to develop the facilities alongside new clean-energy sources.
With data centers and other large loads taking up an increasing amount of grid interconnections, developers will need to build more and more of their own power, according to Kimber. “We see the potential for truly off-grid data centers where the onsite gas fills in for the role of the grid in firming the onsite renewables,” he said.
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