SpaceX is keeping xAI's unpermitted turbines in place for roughly the next twelve months. On Thursday, the company said the units will eventually be removed once a permanent 1.2-gigawatt natural gas power plant is online. The full removal is not expected before July 2027. SpaceX absorbed xAI in February.
SpaceX runs 69 gas turbines for the Colossus data centers, and many of those units have already been in service for months. They sit in Mississippi just south of the Memphis line. The surrounding area is one of the most polluted in the country, and the xAI site's turbines could produce more than 2,000 tons of smog-forming NOx per year.
A lawsuit over the unpermitted turbines was filed by the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center. SpaceX argues that no permits are needed for the existing units because they are still on the trailers they arrived on. Federal rules, however, say those same turbines must be permitted based on their size and operational role, no matter what surface they sit on.
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At the center of the dispute is whether trailer-mounted equipment can be treated as temporary and therefore outside the permitting system. SpaceX says yes; the plaintiffs say no; in the NAACP litigation last month, the Department of Justice came down on SpaceX's side, describing the situation as a matter of "national, economic, and energy security." Although Mississippi has already issued permits for the replacement plant, the existing units are expected to remain on-site into July 2027.
These turbines are part of the wider Colossus buildout that SpaceX inherited when it absorbed xAI in February. The dispute over whether trailer-mounted gas equipment should be treated as temporary has become a test for how quickly AI data centers can bring power online in the region. The surrounding area is already one of the most polluted in the country, which is why environmental groups and the NAACP have pushed for permits.
The new facility is a permanent 1.2-gigawatt natural gas power plant. Based on permits from Mississippi, SpaceX's planned installation will have 41 gas turbines with capacities between 16.48 megawatts and 50 megawatts. That installation is meant to take over from the existing 69 units. TechCrunch could not confirm the exact models now in use, and the newly permitted turbines look like they are not the same as the current equipment.
The site's location is what put the project in Mississippi's permitting system. The data centers are associated with Memphis, but the turbines and the planned replacement plant are on the Mississippi side of the state line. The permits for the new facility were issued by the state of Mississippi.
SpaceX's IPO paperwork says gas turbines for data centers will account for $2.8 billion in spending over the coming three years.
APR Energy, a business focused on temporary gas power, was bought by Elon Musk earlier this year. A cached copy of APR Energy's website, saved before the site disappeared, suggests the company's turbine fleet is also different from the models listed in the new plant permits. Since those APR turbines probably won't be installed at Colossus, the APR Energy fleet may be earmarked for a separate, undisclosed venture.
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