Taylor, a town of about 18,400 people some 36 miles north of Austin, has settled a months-long argument about the data center campus at its eastern edge. On Thursday 8 October the City Council voted 5-0 to annex the Taylor Technology Campus, 664 acres of former farmland between FM 112 and US 79 that Big Watt Digital of South Dakota and PowerHouse Data Centers of Virginia want to fill with data center buildings and a gas-fired power plant of their own. City Hall was full, public comment ran about two hours and more than 20 residents spoke against the deal, Taylor Press reports; the council approved it anyway, on the argument that an annexed site can be regulated and an unincorporated one cannot.
Own Plant, No Grid Feed
The agreement describes 500 MW of data center capacity with an option for a further 500 MW in a later project, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The buildings are not to draw on the grid: an on-site natural gas plant supplies them, with the right to sell surplus power back to the grid when generation exceeds the campus load. The city's own project page confirms the arrangement and adds that battery storage is part of the site and that the emergency backup generators may be tested on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. The agreement does not give the plant's rating or its technology. When the city first publicised the project as Project Mustang in August, it spoke of a 477 MW gas-powered generator and at least two data centers, the Austin Free Press reported; a MySA report later that month put the site's eventual load at 1,050 to 1,400 MW, to be met by 84 to 112 gas reciprocating engines of 12.5 MW each. Those figures predate the agreement and the developers have not confirmed them since.
The Conditions The City Bought
Most of the 20-year agreement is a list of things the county could not have required. Cooling is a closed loop filled with reclaimed water, the initial fill for the whole site being 1.575 million gallons; potable city water is limited to restrooms and break rooms unless the reclaimed supply fails or the city is late with its own reclaimed-water works. Noise at the property lines is capped at 65 dB(A) or the measured pre-development level, whichever is higher, against a state limit of 85 dB(A). Data centers, generation and battery storage stay 700 ft from the southern line towards the nearest homes and 300 ft from the others, behind a 400 ft landscaped buffer with earth berms. Lighting follows the city's dark-sky rules, the developers withdrew their TCEQ wastewater discharge application and will pay for the utility connections. Air emissions stay with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality either way, and that is where opponents say the fight now moves; resident Justin Irving told the council that the vote was not the end of it.
In return the city expects about $1.38 billion in gross tax revenue over 2027 to 2046, a consultant's figure, against roughly $21 million of property tax it collected in the 2026 fiscal year, as Big Watt's John Stokes told the meeting, and $28.2 million of community commitments: $13 million for parks and quality of life, $10.2 million for Taylor ISD programmes, $1.5 million in scholarships, $1 million for workforce training, $1 million for animal care and the rest for local nonprofits. No tax abatement was asked for. Mayor Jim Buzan called the terms the best path forward for Taylor and the surrounding area when the draft was published on 2 October.
Island Load, Island Plant
A campus with no grid connection is a different engineering job from one with a utility feed and standby sets. The generation is the only supply, so maintenance, the spare unit and the summer rating of the plant decide the data center's availability, not the utility's. Central Texas summers are long, and a gas engine plant has to carry the full campus load through them on the cooling it was built with; the site is also bound to keep its noise at the property line down, which concerns the engine radiators as much as anything else on the site. Off-grid campuses in Oklahoma City and elsewhere have the same shape, and the questions a reviewer should ask are the same: what runs when one unit is down for service, and what happens on the hottest afternoon of the year. The regulatory side, as Taylor shows, is settled before the engineering starts; the data center still has to run.
Sources: KUT, Taylor Press, City of Taylor, Austin American-Statesman, MySA, Austin Free Press
