xAI's eight converted jet engines show the cost of skipping the grid queue

Eight jet turbines in Mississippi

TechCrunch reported the detail on 3 November. Each unit can produce up to 50 MW, Tom's Hardware reported the same day, normally enough for around 15,000 homes.

The trade is speed for emissions. Mississippi's permits for the site allow a 25% higher limit for volatile organic compounds, Tom's Hardware reported. For host communities, the open question is what that allowance means in practice.

The units come from ProEnergy, a Missouri company that rebuilds GE engines commonly found on Boeing jets. The Southern Environmental Law Center has challenged the decision. The group argues xAI did not guarantee the units meet standards for pollutants including formaldehyde, and undercounted projected emissions. It previously sued xAI over its use of gas generators without the required permits in an area with more than 100,000 inhabitants.

Why operators are going onsite

The queue is the reason. Hooking up 100 MW to the grid in Northern Virginia takes about seven years, according to the International Energy Agency, cited by TechCrunch.

The engines are pulled from retired aircraft and rebuilt to burn natural gas, and TechCrunch noted they are not a permanent power plant. "It's all about getting power as fast as possible," Rystad Energy analyst Audun Martinsen told the Times. With jet-powered units, "they can have a data center running in 24 months," he said. Most power capacity is expected to come online by 2031, an executive at Mitsubishi Power told Bloomberg last week, TechCrunch reported. The delays are already costing operators business. Microsoft pulled out as anchor customer for Nscale's data centre in Loughton, England, after the local utility said it could not deliver enough power until the early to mid-2030s.

Trump has weighed in. In an Oct. 21 Truth Social post, he said new large-scale data centres should generate their own electricity and return any excess to the local community or grid. He also suggested developers pay host communities a dividend, arguing that data centres which were unpopular became popular once a financial deal was struck.

"New and large, in some cases gigantic, Data Centers are mandated by me to make their own electricity, and give or sell any excess back to the local community, or grid."

The buildout is slipping anyway. As of April, half of data centre buildouts had been cancelled or delayed, partly for lack of power, Tom's Hardware reported. Musk said in August that xAI would increase its data centre capacity sevenfold before the end of 2027.

The trade-offs and the aerospace supply chain

The hardware is a compromise. Converted jet engines are less efficient and pollute more than turbines designed for conventional gas plants, according to the Times. They also take more units to make the same amount of power.

Supply is tight regardless. Some turbine models are effectively sold out through 2031, Data Center Knowledge reported. Patrick Hughes, senior vice president at the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, said a standalone AI data centre can provide sufficient onsite power. But it is not feasible for one AI data centre, let alone the whole fleet, to supply 100% of its own power and run reliably around the clock, he said.

Crusoe ordered 13 ProEnergy converted units in April. In September it walked away from a $1.25 billion deal to buy 29 natural gas turbines from Boom Supersonic. OpenAI had already used gas turbines at its first Stargate site in Abilene, Texas, in 2025, and Crusoe is building that campus.

What happens next

Many projects already have grid connections or power purchase agreements. A formal policy shift would force developers to revisit those plans, Data Center Knowledge reported.

The details vary by site, Hughes said. Permitting timelines, fuel and equipment supply chains, interconnection rules and community considerations differ widely by location. For many facilities, he said, the most likely outcome is a hybrid approach that combines onsite generation and storage with a grid connection. Some experts expect converted jet engines to be a short-term play, with efficiency and environmental concerns growing in importance in a year or two, TechCrunch reported.

The demand behind the scramble is not shrinking. A July 2026 report predicted data centres would use 20% of all U.S. power by 2035, an 83% increase over the same forecast made seven months earlier.