Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is considering adding dozens more methane gas turbines to its operations in South Memphis, according to documents xAI submitted to EPA in March.
Already under fire from Memphis community groups over its use of 35 methane turbines without Clean Air Act permits or pollution controls to power its first supercomputer, xAI is now evaluating bringing dozens more generators to a second site in just 11 miles away.
Documents submitted to EPA in March show xAI is considering bringing enough turbines to the second site to generate 1.56 gigawatts of power — more capacity than the local Tennessee Valley Authority’s gas-fired Allen Combined Cycle Plant. Generating that amount of power would require 40 to 90 turbines based on the make and model of turbines xAI said it plans to use in documents submitted to EPA and obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit legal group Southern Environmental Law Center.
The turbines would help make the data center on Tulane Road “a grass roots operation and facility” that will “produce its own electricity,” Trinity Consultants, which works for xAI, wrote in the preapplication modeling protocol. Such protocols are often submitted to EPA in advance of a formal permit application to demonstrate that air quality standards won’t be violated.
