Big Data

Oklahoma passed a law last year allowing energy-hungry facilities to build their own power. But as data center announcements sprout up across Oklahoma, most include plans to work with local utilities.

Critics say the governor must call legislators to Austin to pass state laws regulating data centers.

As more and more data center developers submit proposals to build in Texas, questions about how they will impact Texas' grid and contribute to drought conditions across the state are widespread.

On Monday, the governor ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to audit all data centers wanting to connect to the state’s power grid.

Some see the AI facilities as a sign of the apocalypse, others see an opportunity to advocate for environmental stewardship.

Data centers are no longer an emerging industry. Driven by cloud computing, crypto mining and artificial intelligence, they are spreading rapidly across Texas, and the projected cost of the tax break has climbed into the billions. On Monday, the state senate finance committee asked if it was time to end the sales tax break for data centers.

While a new state law partly limits data center groundwater use, in reality, data centers avoid water permits entirely by buying water from utilities. Residents are demanding answers in communities like Luther and Yukon.

Several Democratic candidates for local, state, and national offices kicked off their West Texas campaign trail in Lubbock on Saturday with a roundtable, a rally, and a protest. The recurring topic of these events – data centers.

After 20 years as AT&T Stadium and nearly 80 years bearing the name of former university president Clifford Jones, Texas Tech Athletics has announced that the Red Raiders will now play from "Galaxy Stadium." The 15-year naming rights deal between Texas Tech and data center developer Galaxy is just the latest in a push from university leadership to join in on high-tech research, large-scale data, and AI.

Data centers use water to cool their massive arrays of computer servers. A state agency sent out a survey to figure out how much, but less than a third of the companies responded.