XAI data center gets air permit to run 15 turbines, but imaging shows 24 on site
74 comments
·July 7, 2025palmfacehn
cess11
Perhaps this article clears things up:
https://www.selc.org/news/resistance-against-elon-musks-xai-...
palmfacehn
Thanks. Here's a direct link to the only relevant image.
https://www.selc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Untitled-des...
jauntywundrkind
Notable that there are 8 very large/hot heat sources, ~20 much smaller ones. Presumably these are bigger turbines.
Consolidating down lots of small generators to bigger ones might the idea here?
perihelions
From a different perspective: the fact US businesses can assemble massive power plants on demand, in weeks, is quite an illustration of the economic dominance of the country.
smartmic
If you mean the financial power to pay for such power plants, then I agree. But the technical capabilities to quickly provide stationary or mobile power plants can be purchased from a few large, international companies; noteworthy suppliers can be found in the USA, Europe and Asia. And they will build it for you in almost any country in the world, as I said, provided you pay accordingly. Of course, the delivery time of turbines is often a bottleneck, but this applies more to the very large ones than the smaller ones that should actually be installed here (and it also applies equally to all manufacturers).
ben_w
16.48 MW each: https://www.shelbytnhealth.com/DocumentCenter/View/7174/0115...
They're big, by the standard of a domestic source such as a car, but they're not what I'd call "massive" in an economic dominance sense. About the size of a large shipping container, give or take, eyeballing from other photos that tell me which objects the turbines even are: https://www.capacitymedia.com/article/musks-xai-data-centre-...
perihelions
It's a large power plant (400+ MW and rising), rapidly assembled from small, modular components. That's a remarkable thing from any point of view.
The other threads on this topic (powering AI hyperscalers) are usually about nuclear fission, which most of the large players are investing in. Those power plants often take 10+ years to build. One could imagine small reactor modules akin to these 16 MW shipping containers, built in factories and shipped on demand like these, to be assembled into a full power plant in weeks. If someone were to get that business model working, they'd dominate the industry. (Just how big of a premium did xAI pay their vendor, to have all this shipped halfway around the world on a priority schedule?)
rsynnott
There’s a reason this isn’t generally done for real power plants; these little turbines are pretty inefficient. This sort of thing is not uncommon for data centers and other things that need either a lot of backup power or a lot of temporary power, but it would not make for an economically viable power plant.
ben_w
Not that remarkable.
I mean 400 MW is tiling a 4km square with cheap PV, even after accounting for capacity factor. And 400 MW is also what you get from 1052 Tesla Model 3's at max acceleration, according to their website (though obviously draining a 74kWh battery at 510hp empties it rather a lot faster than "overnight"), and ICEs are also tiny power plants so you get the same power out from order-of-magnitude same number of those.
In fact, this is why I'm putting the money I can set aside for investments, into China rather than the USA: they're speed-running cheap PV and batteries, which are cheaper than most everything else right now.
blibble
given musk's attitude to the waste management (just pump it into the lungs of the local population), god help us if he gets access to nuclear reactors
null
blackbear_
Source for the timeline? Nowhere in the article is it said that the construction happened within weeks.
hnthrow90348765
Too bad they're not smart enough to do anything useful with that capacity
fuzzbazz
Can't verify from the low quality photo in the article.
This [1] press release from the Southern Environmental Law Center hints to a possible reason - they may be migrating from small to bigger turbines:
> Aerial images obtained by SELC revealed 35 turbines at the site in March (...) while the company has removed some smaller-sized turbines, it has recently installed three larger turbines
[1] https://www.selc.org/press-release/elon-musks-xai-threatened...
tmaly
That this is a thing makes me wonder if Elon opened a can of worms with this new political party. He is not making any friends challenging the established parties. They will show no regulatory mercy.
danpalmer
Musk's playbook is to do the thing that he feels is obviously right, and figure out the consequences later, and because he's enough of a bully and rich enough, the consequences rarely end up being that big a deal. I believe it's ideological, and from that perspective have a hard time disagreeing with his motivations – I disagree with him, but think he's doing what makes sense to achieve his goals which he believes are good for the world.
He's done this with SpaceX many times over, bullying the FAA and the local council in Texas. He's done this with Tesla again and again with crash data and even selling products that don't exist to consumers. He's going to keep doing it until there are actual consequences because it's hard to say it's not a good business decision if you never actually have to pay for the issues you cause.
palmfacehn
Somehow I doubt that he is personally involved in provisioning auxiliary power sources for a Tennessee datacenter.
glenngillen
If it were truly ideological for him, wouldn't that roof be covered in solar panels and he'd be leading the charge on shifting this huge energy consumption in this emergent high-use use cases towards renewable resources?
relaxing
You must have missed the last several years of Musk’s ideology on display.
sReinwald
You've nailed the pattern. And the regulatory environment actively enables it through what amounts to a pricing model for violations.
When the EPA or county eventually fines xAI for running unpermitted turbines for a year, it'll be what - a few hundred thousand? Maybe low millions if they're feeling particularly spicy? For a company chasing the AI gold rush with Musk's billions behind it, that's not a penalty - it's a rounding error. It's cheaper to violate now and pay later than to wait for permits while competitors build capacity.
And unfortunately, this isn't a bug in the regulatory system - it's the feature. When fines are pocket change relative to potential profits, "ask forgiveness not permission" becomes optimal strategy. The only things that actually change behavior are existential threats (criminal charges, shutdown orders) or catastrophic reputational damage - and Musk has proven immune to both.
Until penalties scale with company valuations or include mandatory shutdowns, this playbook will keep printing money. Memphis residents get respiratory disease, xAI gets compute capacity, and regulators get a check that wouldn't cover a week of Musk's jet fuel.
potato3732842
The root problem here is that the regulatory environment has been (in bits and pieces over the years) set up to be a checkbox exercise for those on the inside and exclusionary toward new entrants. The rules and process of that side of things are not subject to serious oversight so they can be as exclusionary and rent-seekey as the lobbyists and the bureaucrats want, potentially preventing any new entrants.
Musk has, very rightly, realized that the punishment track is subject to far more political and public scrutiny than the approval track and that if you are doing things that people want like building cars and sending rockets into space the scrutiny will prevent them from doing anything to financially cripple your operation.
Ironically, this is playbook that's common at the complete opposite end of the economic activity spectrum where there literally isn't the money to comply. People run unlicensed businesses, do un-permitted work, violate minor regulations, etc, etc, all the time. And by the time anyone figures it out, if anyone ever figures it out, it's too late.
_DeadFred_
Violations should result in a government ownership stake not monetary fines. That way if you prove yourself to not follow the rules, the government has a seat inside your business with enhanced powers to follow what you are doing. It also punishes the people most likely to force a change, the ownership, by diluting their ownership/value.
mynti
you are totally right which makes this so sad. a lot of regulations might be tedious but they have (most of the time) a good reason to exist. now the people around the data center will have to deal with terrible air quality so twitter users can ask about white genocide all day long
xg15
I mean, lots of people in history did what they thought would be good for the world...
blitzar
I am looking at that roof and thinking how much better it would look as one massive solar panel.
perihelions
It'd have to be a solar farm 3 kilometers on each side to meet a 400 megawatt load (with battery storage). If you take the entire block xAI colossus is on—it's 1.2 by 1.6 km—cut down all those trees, raze the elementary school (the one being smogged right now—did anyone notice there was a school right next to it?)—that, times five, is what you'd actually need.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/xai+colossus
The end goal is 2,000 megawatts for this datacenter, so multiply that by five again.
This CEO founded a solar power company, and a battery-storage company as well—I'm very certain he considered the all-solar option carefully, and rejected it for actual technical reasons; not vibes.
blitzar
> all-solar option
Who said it needed to be "all solar". Obvious anyone with a brain would have noticed it is dark at night and there would be no power production so "all solar" is litterally impossible.
superjan
The article talks about pollution but I’d expect them to be very noisy as well. Gas turbines are essentially redesigned aircraft engines.
x187463
There has been reporting about this for months. I realize I'm just a pleb, but I really don't understand why a company with, essentially, limitless money, won't simply install the emissions reducing hardware and properly permit the turbines. Like a lot of what's going on around Elon/US politics, it seems like a meaningless fight and is only further torching reputations. Just do the obvious right thing and move on.
MisterTea
> I realize I'm just a pleb, but I really don't understand why a company with, essentially, limitless money, won't simply install the emissions reducing hardware and properly permit the turbines.
Its about exerting power by willfully defying law. "Catch me if you financially can."
vorpalhex
Read the article carefully.
They are allowed to run N turbines.. but have N+B turbines on the property.
They.. aren't breaking their permit. The article never says they are, it just sets things up for you to have that belief.
It looks like they are swapping turbines, thus the extras. They may also be hoping to get more approved.
These may also be properly emission reducing. The article never says they aren't - it only includes quotes from people saying they don't think they are with no evidence.
The news doesn't lie, but it gets as close as it can.
msdrigg
So being permitted to run 15 turbines and the installing and running 24 turbines is not breaking your permit?
inemesitaffia
How many are running?
Having isn't running.
josefritzishere
Elon has a criminal history of at best ignoring regulations and at worst deliberately defying them. At Tesla he racked up enormous fines for illegal dumping and then a series of on site OSHA vioations. This is just part of the pattern.
metta2uall
One can only hope that after their recent falling-out the Trump administration will re-energise the EPA...
xg15
I'm still skeptical this falling out is real and not just promo for his party.
dotancohen
[flagged]
sReinwald
The article reports that xAI operated gas turbines without required permits and pollution controls for over a year. That's not a "hit piece" - it's documenting regulatory violations with thermal imaging evidence and official permit records.
If this were actually a hit piece on Musk, wouldn't his name be in the headline? Instead, it's mentioned once in paragraph four as standard journalistic context - exactly how articles about AWS mention Bezos. And yes, the affected neighborhoods are predominantly Black - that's a factual demographic statement about who bears the health burden, not "playing the race card." Environmental justice reporting routinely documents how industrial pollution disproportionately impacts minority communities.
Your logic seems to be: "Musk has done good things for the environment globally, therefore local reporting about his company's regulatory violations must be a hit piece." That's a non sequitur. Both can be true - Tesla can advance EV adoption while xAI can violate air quality regulations in Memphis. One doesn't negate the other.
The real tell here is that you're more upset about accurate reporting than about a tech company potentially exposing already-vulnerable communities to additional pollution without proper permits. Your priorities seem to be incredibly misplaced, if you ask me.
How's your Tesla Model 3 doing, by the way? Not that I'd want to imply your choice of transportation has anything to do with your incredibly unfavorable interpretation of this article and defense of Musk. But I have to wonder if your perspective would be different if this facility was in your neighborhood rather than South Memphis, or if you drove a Hyundai.
PhilipRoman
I just realized I don't even know what "disproportionately impacts" actually means. Disproportionate to what? Does it simply mean bigger impact or bigger-than-predicted-by-an-oracle impact? Because I'm quite sure that every bad thing on this planet impacts poor people more.
sReinwald
"Disproportionately impacts" means that the burden of pollution isn't randomly distributed - it's systematically concentrated in specific communities. In this case: predominantly Black neighborhoods in South Memphis already have asthma rates and cancer risks 4x the national average (per the article), and xAI added unpermitted turbines to that existing burden.
You're absolutely right that most hazards affect poor communities more. That's not a coincidence - it's the predictable result of power dynamics in zoning and enforcement decisions.
Your comment reads a bit like "water is wet, why mention it?" But most people living in clean-air zip codes have no idea their comfort of living depends on someone else's respiratory disease. They assume industrial siting is purely based on logistics or economics, not on which communities lack the political capital to fight back.
The whole point is that zoning decisions, permit enforcement, and industrial siting aren't random acts of nature. Rich neighborhoods get golf courses and poor neighborhoods get data centers with unpermitted turbines. That's not gravity - it's policy. Documenting these patterns isn't stating the obvious, it's the first step toward accountability. Because "that's just how things are" is exactly what those benefiting from the status quo want everyone to believe.
richrichardsson
> I can not think of a single human who has done more to reduce dependence on fossil fuels
I'm struggling to see how it's a single human that is responsible when they just invested in companies?
DamonHD
Many people seem to discount pollution etc that only affects brown-ish people far away that they personally don't know. And guess in which places these kind of stunts are commonly pulled? You wouldn't plonk an illegally fume-belching data centre in a rich white 'hood even if there was plenty of electricity, because political power is the key lever.
(I am a 'rich' white western man, FWIW.)
rbanffy
You make a great point - pollution sources are often located on cheap land that's occupied, predominantly, by poor people, which, in most of the world, correlates with non-whites.
Would something like Flint have happened in Scarsdale or Los Altos? Of course not.
curt15
>They claim that the xAI air pollution disproportionately affects black neighbourhoods.
Does it? What are the demographics near those turbines?
rbanffy
Does it really make a difference? Unless, of course, there was a cheaper location near predominantly white neighborhoods.
curt15
The OP had an issue with the claim
>that the xAI air pollution disproportionately affects black neighbourhoods.
So is it true or not? If it true, the outcome is not equitable whether you call it racism or (probably more accurately) classism. It's part of the pernicious pattern among powerful companies of privatizing profits while socialising costs.
amitrip
[dead]
NilMostChill
>I'm no Elon fan, but I can not think of a single human who has done more to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
We could use some of that clean energy he's facilitated to extract a small amount of gold from seawater.
Enough to fashion a gold medal we could then award you for first place in olympic level mental gymnastics.
davidguetta
Some people really have time to lose
pyrale
I know right, why do people care so much about air pollution? It’s not like it kills anyone, right? What’s smog anyway?
msgodel
I live somewhere that's never had a smog problem so I'm not super familiar with it but do gas turbines actually generate smog? I feel like of all the classes of heat engines they'd produce the fewest particulates. Is this actually a problem out there in the West?
perihelions
Burning of methane (natural gas) produces oxides of nitrogen (NOx) (several types), which are a major driver of smog. See, as a starting point,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx
While natural gas is cleaner than coal in some obvious ways (i.e., no particulate solids), it has a specific problem with NOx, because of the super high temperatures inside internal-combustion gas turbines. The upside is higher thermodynamic efficiency (highest of any thermal source); the downside is, this.
pyrale
It is not a problem if the plant respects regulation and industry standards... which in this particular case doesn’t seem to be a priority.
rbanffy
Besides that, who would imagine Elon Musk, of all people, would be breaking laws?
spectre9
- person who has never in their life checked an aqi map of earth
jasonjayr
Many investors use imaging to see how many customers visit a store -- they count the cars in the parking lot at certain times of day.
davidguetta
that's actually an interesting point. Like people using sat imaging on steel depot in australian to evaluate the demand
Thermal imaging, displaying 24 active turbines would have been more relevant. The article contained one image, none of the alleged turbines were highlighted. As a layperson, I'm not sure what I am looking at here.