Massive natural gas plant from Switch approved by Nevada regulators

Another behind-the-meter natural gas plant has been approved by Nevada regulators.

Switch, a major data center player in Nevada, has been approved for an approximately 20-acre, 510-megawatt natural gas power plant in Northern Nevada on the former Sierra Biofuels Refinery in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, with the company serving as the plant’s primary user.

Despite significant pushback, the Public Utilities Commission approved the plant on Tuesday during a regular agenda meeting.

The project was initially filed with the commission in June by Nexus Fulcrum LLC. At the time, the application identified only an unnamed “single off-taker.” That changed in October, when Switch disclosed in a filing that it is both “the intended off-taker” and the “ultimate owner” of the plant.

It will use nine gas turbines to power the plant and will begin construction in the first quarter of 2027 and finish in 2029, according to filings. During construction, it would use 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of water per day, and 145 acre feet, or 47 million gallons, of water per year during its life cycle.

What is behind-the-meter?

The data center boom has led Nevada’s energy grid into uncharted territory. To bypass the long queue of large load customers looking to be connected to the grid, developers are proposing their own behind-the-meter power-generating plants.

That can take two to three years, or more if infrastructure needs to be built by the utility, said Jonathan Koomey, an energy researcher and founder of Koomey Analytics.

“The reason why people are doing the behind-the-meter power is because it’s a way to short-circuit that,” Koomey said.

As with the Switch plant, many data centers use gas turbines as a means to power them. The turbines are the fastest option to get the centers up and running, but not the cheapest — and definitely the dirtiest, Koomey said.

“It’s pretty clear that solar, wind and batteries are the cheapest way to generate bulk power,” he said. “What they’re doing is they’re grabbing the thing that’s immediately in front of them, which means they can buy the gas turbines and get them going.”

In Nevada, behind-the-meter is becoming an increasingly appealing strategy. Currently, NV Energy does not have the infrastructure to immediately serve the large swaths of data centers interested in the region.

Data centers will drive a dramatic shift in Nevada’s energy landscape, growing from 5 percent of electricity sales today to 64 percent by 2046, NV Energy said in a recent filing that provides its road map of load growth for the next 20 years.

NV Energy’s existing and approved systemwide generating capacity through 2050 is roughly 10 gigawatts. If projected data center demand materializes, the systemwide generating capacity needed to serve projected demand could exceed 20 gigawatts by 2050.

In September, the PUC approved two temporary natural gas plant requests from Fleet Data Centers, despite hearing hours of public comment against the method.

The two natural gas plants are intended to power two data centers from the developer, totaling 362 megawatts.

Contact Emerson Drewes at [email protected]. Follow @EmersonDrewes on X.