Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Reeves County Banks 6,000 Jobs as the Behind-the-Meter Model Scales

Behind-the-meter generation took Reeves County from a power-starved queue to 6,000 jobs and $10 billion, and the same model is now showing up at Google's Meitner campus and across a Texas market where ERCOT is fielding 445 GW of requests on an 85-GW system. The developers who lock self-supplied power and publish water data before testimony reaches Austin will write the rules everyone else builds under.

Today's Lead

Chevron and Microsoft just drew the blueprint for building around ERCOT's queue. Their 20-year power purchase agreement anchors Project Kilby, a 2.67 GW natural gas facility on 2,000 acres in Reeves County near Pecos, co-located directly with a Microsoft data center campus and sitting behind the meter, so it won't initially draw from the regional grid.

The architecture is clean: Chevron's Energy Forge One builds and operates, GE Vernova supplies the turbines, Caterpillar's Solar Turbines division adds capacity, and Microsoft's 20-year commitment to 2046 is the asset that makes the whole thing pencil. Chevron projects a final investment decision by end of 2026, first power in 2028, peak construction employment above 6,000, and more than $10 billion in state and local tax revenue over the project's life. When the queue can't move fast enough, the deepest-pocketed tenants build their own supply. The open question for every 500+ MW load: does dedicated generation stay a niche play, or become the default?

[1]·[2]

Power

The queue is full, so developers are building around it.

Kilby is the loudest example of a pattern showing up everywhere. Google's Meitner Energy Center in Gray and Roberts Counties pairs more than 1 GW of dedicated wind, solar, and storage directly with new compute, and its Voltus deal in PJM assembles up to 100 MW annually of distributed resources to shave peaks. CBRE's Q1 2026 data shows why: Dallas-Fort Worth grew inventory 43.7 percent (379.9 MW) while available power rose just 1.4 MW year-over-year. The capacity is going up. The power to feed it isn't keeping pace.

ERCOT is processing 445 GW of large-load interconnection requests on an 85-GW system, and DFW rental rates stayed flat despite the building boom, a tell that power scarcity, not real estate, is the binding constraint. Developers who lock behind-the-meter generation or long-dated contracts before breaking ground will outrun those waiting on grid availability. The ones relying on the queue will connect to a system that can't reliably serve their load.

[3]·[4]·[5]·[6]

Water

Texas lawmakers can't count what data centers drink, and they're done asking politely.

The House Natural Resources Committee heard hard numbers Tuesday: the Texas Water Development Board now surveys 341 data centers, up from 22 in 2023, but only 17 percent completed mandatory water-use questionnaires. A separate PUCT spring survey drew responses from 28 companies covering 92 facilities, less than a third of those believed operational. The Water Development Board admitted it can't track groundwater pumping in the more than half of Texas counties without a groundwater conservation district, where no legal extraction limit exists. Rep. Trent Ashby called it "a broken system."

The grievance is real and named. Rancher Roger Browning of Quanah testified neighbors' wells failed after data centers arrived, one dropping from a 24-hour stream to dry in 30 minutes, though without comprehensive data, no one can yet separate industry extraction from natural decline. The Data Center Coalition's Dan Diorio warned against mandating cooling technologies. Chevron's brackish-groundwater plan at Kilby points the way: developers who secure water-supply agreements and publish usage data before testimony reaches Austin will permit faster. Those defending opacity after the fact will write none of the rules.

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Sources we cited

8 articles across 8 publishers · 352 reviewed today

[1]TradingView
Chevron and Microsoft Partner on Landmark Texas AI Power Project
Jun 23, 2026·Chevron Corporation CVX and Microsoft Corporation MSFT have joined forces in a landmark partnership to develop one of the largest co-located…
[2]Startup Fortune
Chevron and Microsoft sign a 20-year gas deal that turns an oil major into an AI infrastructure company
Jun 22, 2026·Chevron's 20-year power deal with Microsoft is not just another data center contract. It shows you where the AI buildout is really getting s…
[3]Data Center Frontier
Revolutionizing Data Center Cooling: Innovations for AI and HPC Growth
Jun 23, 2026·Over the last month we’ve seen a number of significant announcements from vendors focused on addressing the cooling issues in the data cente…
[4]Data Center Richness
Google's Many Bets on a Cleaner Future for AI
Jun 24, 2026·The prime directive for the future of the data center industry should be building better data centers. Better for the community, better for …
[5]Data Center Dynamics
CBRE: Global data center demand continues to outstrip supply, driving up rental rates and construction costs
Jun 24, 2026·Trend seen in all regions despite extraordinary new supply growth Global data center supply grew across all regions year-over-year in the f…
[6]Texas Energy and Power
Why PJM is looking at the Texas grid
Jun 24, 2026·Josephus Allmond, Virginia's Chief Energy Officer, on what PJM could borrow from ERCOT's market design, and why one Virginia cost rule block…
[7]KWTX
Lawmakers demand answers on Texas data centers’ water use
Jun 24, 2026·AUSTIN, Texas (KWTX) - State lawmakers are demanding answers about how much water Texas data centers are actually using, and why the state s…
[8]Courthouse News
Texas lawmakers take up data center water use concerns
Jun 24, 2026·AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — Data center opponents and advocates descended on the Texas Capitol Tuesday to plead with lawmakers to exercise their po…

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