6 ms·

Texas Data Center Map: See where data centers are operating or planned

34 points by simonpure 1mo ago

rpaik 1mo ago
How can locations be labeled secret (for 29 data centers)? Aren't there hearings or filings for proposed data centers?
- bix6 1mo ago
  Government exists to serve corporations not individuals in this country. They can pretend these are confidential and have various cover to not release info as a result.
- sublinear 1mo ago
  Border patrol, law enforcement, FBI, etc. There's a few military bases as well. I'm not sure what else you're expecting in Texas. If you look at google maps, the "secrets" will become a lot less mysterious.
polski-g 1mo ago
Some of these are pipe dreams. A Microsoft datacenter at 2.5MW, another at 2MW. There's no way they're going to get generation capacity for that load.
- convolvatron 1mo ago
  are you off by a K? from the article - 'As of early August, ERCOT was considering more than 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to the Texas electric grid, about 90% of which came from data center projects.'
  - dylan604 1mo ago
    Now I'm curious what the other 10% is.
    - culi 29d ago
      The entire rest of society? Schools, hospitals, homes, businesses, etc
- infecto 1mo ago
  Why is that a pipe dream? It’s BTM for at least one of the sites you are talking about. The only constraint, which is real, is availability of turbines but other than a delayed timeline i am not sure what’s a pipe dream.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- bpodgursky 1mo ago
  2.5 MW / 2 MW are tiny. I think you are confused.
- quickthrowman 29d ago
  The office building I’m sitting in has a 2 MVA transformer feeding a 2500A 480V three-phase service, 2 MW is peanuts.
xnx 1mo ago
And here's a map of major water users in Texas: https://golfcoursebrowser.com/ https://golfcoursebrowser.com/
- culi 29d ago
  Despite the lobbying effort, it's still true that over 90% of data centers are not closed loop. Per-acre data centers use much more water. More important politically, is that your water bill will absolutely go up faster with a new data center in town than with a new golf course. Dc's usually draw from a single pipe while golf courses and farmland spread it out. Also a golf course usually uses primarily greywater or recycled water. The grievances about water usage are absolutely well-founded. Industry sockpuppets often like to push statistics about closed-loop data centers (which are less than 10% of all data centers) to fight back. Closed-loop data centers have their own drawbacks like drastically increased electricity usage and added pollution concerns due to the toxic sludge that needs to be bled out every month. The golf course line has never been convincing. Find something new.
  - thegrim33 29d ago
    >> Industry sockpuppets often like to push statistics about closed-loop data centers >> So I'm going make my own slew of claims, yet provide absolutely zero sources for said claims, I'll just present my opinions as if they're known fact Well, you surely convinced me.
    - culi 29d ago
      I responded to a lazy comment with a higher effort comment. I think I left the conversation better than I found it. Not sure which part you'd like sourced, but here's a paper I think does a good job of covering some of these topics https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108310 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108310 Some highlights: > While data center electricity use has been the subject of much investigation, data center water consumption is a less studied topic that is becoming increasingly important in the context of water scarcity and freshwater conservation, especially at local levels. Many data centers can consume a significant amount of water directly for cooling and space conditioning > For example, Google's data centers in The Dalles consumed 355 million gallons of water in 2021, representing 29 % of the city's total water consumption > Additionally, data centers consume water indirectly through the water used for electricity generation. This type of water use can be significant at the local or national level depending on the power generation technologies, power mixes, and electricity usage of the data centers.
cobolcomesback 1mo ago
This is just a rehash of the map already available at datacentermap.com (it’s literally cited as their source). Not sure what KXAN is adding here. Also worth noting that a very loose definition of data center is used here that doesn’t fit the current colloquial usage of the term. One of the “data centers” listed in the middle of Austin, for example, is barely the size of a house and is actually just the switching infrastructure for a radio tower. Not every dot on this map is an energy-guzzling hyperscaler boogie man.
- Psillisp 1mo ago
  I much prefer the KXAN presentation of the data and the map layer styles. Did this claim to be a 'hyperscaler' map?
- sublinear 1mo ago
  Totally agree. The story is similar for all the dots in the middle of nowhere and small towns. That's half the map! If people are so curious, they should head on out there and see what the fuss is about. They're going to find a lot of sheds and random closets with a single rack at most. Knowing how this state operates, I wouldn't doubt a lot of these ended up on the list for small business tax purposes or subsidies. That's a different and much less interesting news story, though.
  - Psillisp 29d ago
    It's almost like MOST OF TEXAS is 'in the middle of nowhere and small towns.' lol
    - cryptonector 29d ago
      A lot of these are decidedly not in the middle of nowhere. The corridor from San Antonio to Dallas, passing through Austin, is almost a continuous city, and it's becoming that.
- cryptonector 29d ago
  KXAN is adding eyeballs. Maybe.
mohamedkoubaa 1mo ago
Some of these are just office buildings with multiple companies. Are we really calling a rented space with servers a data center now?
ActorNightly 1mo ago
My takeaway from this is apparently you can build a datacenter in a place where the weather reaches 110 degrees in the summer. AC has come a long way. I wonder what cost feasability of building essentially a biodome that is actively climate controlled that spans an entire town or city.
ChrisArchitect 1mo ago
How does this compare to the crowdsourced data included on https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/ https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/ ?
evan_ 1mo ago
I predict "data centers" are going to start being built but they'll say it's a distribution warehouse for motorcycle parts or a factory or something. There'll be a token amount of floor space set aside to manufacture pen cartridges but then there'll just be an incidental 200000 sq ft of server racks. Actually I'm sure they're already doing that.
gustavus 1mo ago
One question I've got is why Texas? It gets very warm there and DCs need cooling. Wouldn't like Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michian be cheaper. I mean Michigan's whole schtick is land of 1000 lakes, and that's not even considering Alaska which is massive, unpeopled, and colder than a nun's ruler? I'm not saying for or against, I'm just curious why they are choosing Texas?
- darth_aardvark 1mo ago
  It's not geography, it's politics. Low taxes, general amenability to big businesses, and low ecological restrictions.
  - culi 29d ago
    It's not even taxes. It's the fact that municipalities and cities are making deals with these companies to give them, e.g., 10 years of tax breaks to build there. If you live in Texas, you are subsidizing these companies
- bonestamp2 29d ago
  It's easier to get permits in Texas than most other states, which is especially important for the power generation that some of these data centers are building.
adjejmxbdjdn 1mo ago
Now do dairy operations… One of the heaviest water consumers and a massive user of land (especially when considering the land needed to grow feed). And data centers aren’t creating lagoons of shit. And that’s even before you get to the moral atrocity of dairy.
- josefresco 29d ago
  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/cc02f97b1129447db2420eb8b6b258e1 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/cc02f97b1129447db2420eb... It's a little dated but I'm sure it hasn't changed much since 2024. Tulare County (CA), the Panhandle region (TX), and the Magic Valley (ID) consistently rank as the highest-density clusters for the largest individual dairy herds in the country. Also: https://ever.ag/map-downloads https://ever.ag/map-downloads

34 points by simonpure 1mo ago

rpaik 1mo ago

How can locations be labeled secret (for 29 data centers)? Aren't there hearings or filings for proposed data centers?

bix6 1mo ago
Government exists to serve corporations not individuals in this country. They can pretend these are confidential and have various cover to not release info as a result.
sublinear 1mo ago
Border patrol, law enforcement, FBI, etc. There's a few military bases as well. I'm not sure what else you're expecting in Texas. If you look at google maps, the "secrets" will become a lot less mysterious.

polski-g 1mo ago

Some of these are pipe dreams. A Microsoft datacenter at 2.5MW, another at 2MW. There's no way they're going to get generation capacity for that load.

convolvatron 1mo ago
are you off by a K? from the article - 'As of early August, ERCOT was considering more than 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to the Texas electric grid, about 90% of which came from data center projects.'
- dylan604 1mo ago
  Now I'm curious what the other 10% is.
  - culi 29d ago
    The entire rest of society? Schools, hospitals, homes, businesses, etc
infecto 1mo ago
Why is that a pipe dream? It’s BTM for at least one of the sites you are talking about. The only constraint, which is real, is availability of turbines but other than a delayed timeline i am not sure what’s a pipe dream.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
bpodgursky 1mo ago
2.5 MW / 2 MW are tiny. I think you are confused.
quickthrowman 29d ago
The office building I’m sitting in has a 2 MVA transformer feeding a 2500A 480V three-phase service, 2 MW is peanuts.

xnx 1mo ago

And here's a map of major water users in Texas: https://golfcoursebrowser.com/ https://golfcoursebrowser.com/

culi 29d ago
Despite the lobbying effort, it's still true that over 90% of data centers are not closed loop. Per-acre data centers use much more water. More important politically, is that your water bill will absolutely go up faster with a new data center in town than with a new golf course. Dc's usually draw from a single pipe while golf courses and farmland spread it out. Also a golf course usually uses primarily greywater or recycled water. The grievances about water usage are absolutely well-founded. Industry sockpuppets often like to push statistics about closed-loop data centers (which are less than 10% of all data centers) to fight back. Closed-loop data centers have their own drawbacks like drastically increased electricity usage and added pollution concerns due to the toxic sludge that needs to be bled out every month. The golf course line has never been convincing. Find something new.
- thegrim33 29d ago
  >> Industry sockpuppets often like to push statistics about closed-loop data centers >> So I'm going make my own slew of claims, yet provide absolutely zero sources for said claims, I'll just present my opinions as if they're known fact Well, you surely convinced me.
  - culi 29d ago
    I responded to a lazy comment with a higher effort comment. I think I left the conversation better than I found it. Not sure which part you'd like sourced, but here's a paper I think does a good job of covering some of these topics https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108310 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108310 Some highlights: > While data center electricity use has been the subject of much investigation, data center water consumption is a less studied topic that is becoming increasingly important in the context of water scarcity and freshwater conservation, especially at local levels. Many data centers can consume a significant amount of water directly for cooling and space conditioning > For example, Google's data centers in The Dalles consumed 355 million gallons of water in 2021, representing 29 % of the city's total water consumption > Additionally, data centers consume water indirectly through the water used for electricity generation. This type of water use can be significant at the local or national level depending on the power generation technologies, power mixes, and electricity usage of the data centers.

cobolcomesback 1mo ago

This is just a rehash of the map already available at datacentermap.com (it’s literally cited as their source). Not sure what KXAN is adding here. Also worth noting that a very loose definition of data center is used here that doesn’t fit the current colloquial usage of the term. One of the “data centers” listed in the middle of Austin, for example, is barely the size of a house and is actually just the switching infrastructure for a radio tower. Not every dot on this map is an energy-guzzling hyperscaler boogie man.

Psillisp 1mo ago
I much prefer the KXAN presentation of the data and the map layer styles. Did this claim to be a 'hyperscaler' map?
sublinear 1mo ago
Totally agree. The story is similar for all the dots in the middle of nowhere and small towns. That's half the map! If people are so curious, they should head on out there and see what the fuss is about. They're going to find a lot of sheds and random closets with a single rack at most. Knowing how this state operates, I wouldn't doubt a lot of these ended up on the list for small business tax purposes or subsidies. That's a different and much less interesting news story, though.
- Psillisp 29d ago
  It's almost like MOST OF TEXAS is 'in the middle of nowhere and small towns.' lol
  - cryptonector 29d ago
    A lot of these are decidedly not in the middle of nowhere. The corridor from San Antonio to Dallas, passing through Austin, is almost a continuous city, and it's becoming that.
cryptonector 29d ago
KXAN is adding eyeballs. Maybe.

mohamedkoubaa 1mo ago

Some of these are just office buildings with multiple companies. Are we really calling a rented space with servers a data center now?

ActorNightly 1mo ago

My takeaway from this is apparently you can build a datacenter in a place where the weather reaches 110 degrees in the summer. AC has come a long way. I wonder what cost feasability of building essentially a biodome that is actively climate controlled that spans an entire town or city.

ChrisArchitect 1mo ago

How does this compare to the crowdsourced data included on https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/ https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/ ?

evan_ 1mo ago

I predict "data centers" are going to start being built but they'll say it's a distribution warehouse for motorcycle parts or a factory or something. There'll be a token amount of floor space set aside to manufacture pen cartridges but then there'll just be an incidental 200000 sq ft of server racks. Actually I'm sure they're already doing that.

gustavus 1mo ago

One question I've got is why Texas? It gets very warm there and DCs need cooling. Wouldn't like Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michian be cheaper. I mean Michigan's whole schtick is land of 1000 lakes, and that's not even considering Alaska which is massive, unpeopled, and colder than a nun's ruler? I'm not saying for or against, I'm just curious why they are choosing Texas?

darth_aardvark 1mo ago
It's not geography, it's politics. Low taxes, general amenability to big businesses, and low ecological restrictions.
- culi 29d ago
  It's not even taxes. It's the fact that municipalities and cities are making deals with these companies to give them, e.g., 10 years of tax breaks to build there. If you live in Texas, you are subsidizing these companies
bonestamp2 29d ago
It's easier to get permits in Texas than most other states, which is especially important for the power generation that some of these data centers are building.

adjejmxbdjdn 1mo ago

Now do dairy operations… One of the heaviest water consumers and a massive user of land (especially when considering the land needed to grow feed). And data centers aren’t creating lagoons of shit. And that’s even before you get to the moral atrocity of dairy.

josefresco 29d ago
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/cc02f97b1129447db2420eb8b6b258e1 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/cc02f97b1129447db2420eb... It's a little dated but I'm sure it hasn't changed much since 2024. Tulare County (CA), the Panhandle region (TX), and the Magic Valley (ID) consistently rank as the highest-density clusters for the largest individual dairy herds in the country. Also: https://ever.ag/map-downloads https://ever.ag/map-downloads