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Off-grid power: the options
A data center that cannot wait for grid interconnection has a short menu of real options: natural gas reciprocating engines, natural gas turbines, or a fleet that combines the two — with solar, storage, and nuclear in supporting roles at best for now. What separates the options is not enthusiasm but physics: a training or inference load runs around the clock, and the generation behind it must too.
Gas reciprocating engines
Recips are the workhorses of distributed generation: modular blocks that can be ordered, shipped, and commissioned faster than most alternatives, then added in increments as the load grows. They tolerate variable gas quality, restart quickly, and their modularity is itself redundancy — lose one engine out of dozens and the load never notices. The trade-offs are footprint and a maintenance cadence spread across many machines.
Gas turbines
Turbines deliver more power per machine and shine at larger block sizes. Aeroderivative units start fast and follow load well; industrial frames run efficiently at steady state. The constraint today is the order book — large turbines carry delivery queues measured in years — which is why many off-grid developments pair turbine capacity for the long term with recips that arrive first.
Why solar-plus-storage cannot carry the load yet
Solar is cheap energy but not firm power. A data center’s load is flat through the night and through cloudy weeks; covering it with solar means overbuilding panels several times over and adding storage measured in days rather than hours. At the scale of a large AI campus, that combination remains an economic and land-use problem without a current answer. Solar earns its place as a supplement — shaving fuel burn while the sun is up — not as the primary source.
Why nuclear is later, not now
Small modular reactors are a credible long-term answer for compute, and the industry’s interest in them is rational. But licensing, siting, and first-of-a-kind construction run on timelines measured in years at best — a mismatch with loads that need energization on the buildout’s schedule. Nuclear is a technology to plan toward, not a way to power a data center breaking ground this year.
Fuel logistics decide the site
Every gas option lives or dies on fuel: pressure, quality, and a contract that survives price spikes. Trucked fuel works for weeks; pipeline-quality supply at the source works for decades. That is why serious off-grid development gravitates to where the gas already is — the logic behind stranded Permian gas and the model Corley Energy builds at Power Foundry. How the all-in economics compare with grid service is worked through in behind-the-meter vs grid: the cost math.
About Corley Energy
Corley Energy is a behind-the-meter independent power producer, founded in 2024 by Jake Corley, Tim Bozeman, and Mark Meyer. We convert stranded Permian Basin natural gas into firm, contracted electricity for AI data centers at Power Foundry, our ~1,000-acre development in Upton County, Texas. Start with what a power foundry is, see the company facts, or check current capacity on the Sites page.
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Who provides behind-the-meter power for AI data centers? · Converting stranded natural gas into data center power · N+1 and redundancy design for off-grid data centers · Browse the full library