In a few short years, the artificial intelligence industry has transformed places such as central Ohio, where farmland is giving way to data centers and computer chip factories.

Companies are so desperate to secure power for these projects that some, like Meta, are looking beyond the electric grid. Developers are building power plants by stringing together batteries, along with giant engines and mobile generators to turn natural gas into electricity.

It is the industrial version of what homeowners might do to get through a hurricane. Only in this case, some technology companies are planning to rely on off-grid gas power for many years.

This is happening as electricity is becoming a major political issue, with fights breaking out over how much energy costs, where it comes from and who ought to pay for what.

Data centers, which consume huge amounts of energy, are at the center of these battles.

Going off grid was no one’s first choice. Off-grid power generally costs a lot more, partly because developers need to install more equipment than will be used at any one time in case machines break or need servicing. A lot of this gear is also less efficient than the airplane-size machines used at big power plants, meaning it needs to burn more gas to generate the same electricity.

But in some states, it might take years to get permission to plug new power plants into the grid.

By the end of 2025, an estimated 39% of the gas power capacity being developed in the United States was designed to serve data centers on-site, according to the Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit organization that tracks energy projects. That is up from 5% at the end of 2024.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” said Joe Kava, a consultant who previously led global data center development for Google. “The hyperscalers are not going to be curtailed because they can’t get power,” he said, using a term for large tech companies.

Power Plants Bloom

Power plants have bloomed in New Albany, Ohio, near Columbus, seemingly overnight. A little more than a year ago, Sloan Spalding, the mayor, learned that a data center developer wanted to build the town’s first gas-fired power plant. Now, three are under construction, to exclusively power data centers.

“Frankly, we were all a little surprised,” Spalding said.

Together, the plants will rely on 61 engines, 30 small turbines and 16 other generators, regulatory filings show. All of that equipment burns natural gas to generate electricity, but each operates differently. That does not include battery storage systems to manage demand fluctuations and diesel generators to provide backup power in emergencies.

It is the kind of equipment you might expect in remote oil fields. Were they connected to the grid, the machines being installed in New Albany could potentially power around 600,000 homes.

“For better or for worse, we are the pioneers in this process,” Spalding said. “There’s not a lot we can do to stop it.”

Tech giants generally say they do not want to build or operate power plants. In some places, the companies are fighting efforts to require data centers to rely on their own power sources or reduce energy consumption when electricity systems are under strain.

But the tech industry’s appetite for energy has become all but insatiable because of artificial intelligence, and there are only so many places where companies can draw large amounts of power from the grid quickly. Wait times vary by region, but it now takes an average of four years or more for data centers to connect to U.S. grids, according to JLL, a real estate services firm.

One of the first to go it alone was Elon Musk’s xAI, which opened a data center in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2024, powering it with more than a dozen gas turbines rolled in on flatbed trucks. The Southern Environmental Law Center later claimed the company flouted permitting requirements and violated the federal Clean Air Act in Memphis and at another location in Southaven, Mississippi. xAI, which eventually received permits for some turbines in Memphis and stopped using others, did not respond to requests for comment.

By that point, tech companies were flocking to Ohio, so much so that the main electric utility serving the Columbus area stopped accepting data center applications for new grid connections in March 2023. The state quickly became one of the first battlegrounds between utilities and some of the world’s most valuable companies.

It was against that backdrop that some developers started going off grid in New Albany, which is near the western edge of a large natural gas deposit.

EdgeConneX, a Washington-area data center developer that did not respond to requests for comment, is behind one of the power plants. Williams Cos., an Oklahoma pipeline operator, is building the other two for Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

Meta Agrees to Buy Power

Meta has agreed to buy the power that Williams generates for at least a decade, said Chad Zamarin, Williams’ CEO.

“Whether they use it or not, we will get paid,” Zamarin said.

The power deal is among the most expensive that Paul Zimbardo, an analyst at the investment firm Jefferies, said he had come across. Meta may have agreed to pay Williams $140 to $160 per megawatt-hour, the investment bank estimated, well above the price of grid power.

These plants will not affect the price of electricity for Ohio residents because the facilities are not connected to the grid, though higher gas demand could drive up fuel prices over time.

Meta said the local utility’s pause on serving new data centers, which ended last year, influenced its decision to go off grid. The company has pledged to fully offset its greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 and is buying renewable energy to compensate for the electricity it gets from fossil fuels, said Ryan Daniels, a company spokesperson.

Most of the off-grid power plants being planned around the country are under construction or about to be, meaning the full environmental effects have yet to be felt.

New Albany’s new power plants are expected to release more nitrogen oxides — a group of pollutants linked to respiratory diseases like asthma — for each unit of electricity they produce than the larger gas plants that power most of Ohio, according to an analysis of regulatory filings and manufacturer data by the Environmental Defense Fund. That review, performed for The New York Times, accounts for the emissions controls that the developers have said they would install.

“I do worry about the near term impacts of this choice on air quality and communities today,” said Mark Brownstein, a senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund. “Why exactly are we rushing?” he added. “There is a concern that haste is making waste here.”

A Williams spokesperson said the company would “meet and exceed all state-established requirements to protect public health and the environment.” A spokesperson for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said it modeled air quality to assess the facilities’ cumulative impact and ensure compliance with federal standards before giving developers permission to build the plants.

Noise levels must remain within 5 decibels of ambient levels, said a spokesperson for the Ohio Power Siting Board, which also reviews major energy projects.

A big question is how long this gas power frenzy will last. Manufacturers of gas turbines and related equipment, including GE Vernova and Siemens Energy, have been wrestling with how much money to invest in new manufacturing lines. Their big concern is that by the time the new capacity is ready, demand for the equipment might have weakened significantly.

Baker Hughes, an oil field service company that makes the kinds of turbines being used off grid, is betting on strong data center demand for at least several years. It is one of many oil and gas companies that have piled into the power business as oil field work has slowed.

“We don’t see this being a fad,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, the Houston-based company’s CEO.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Rebecca F. Elliott and Harry Stevens/Clara Vannucci
c. 2026 The New York Times Company