Further, there's a gas turbine shortage so Microsoft choosing to put their (presumably limited) allocation of gas turbines in West Texas, where they have good alternatives, seems a bit mysterious. Why not save that massive amount of turbines for the northeast DCs, where renewables work far poorer yet gas is more reliable?

The reasons that seem most convincing to me:

1. Political environment is hostile to renewables and Microsoft doesn't want to paint a target on their back by choosing solar plus batteries, the choice others are making in West Texas.

2. Grid connection drastically changes economics, but pipelines for gas are cheap or something, so the massive cost and delay from grid interconnection simply isn't worth it

3. There are particular political favors going on with Chevron, e.g. Chevron wants gas in the area and is willing to increase MS's turbine allocation if they do it in west Texas, or Chevron is helping get around pesky local political approvals for data centers, or something like that.

The cost of gas does not seem like a justification for this, though.

Cheap gas is great, but 2.67GW of new build natural gas in this market will cost $6-8 billion in fixed costs. You need wholesale pricing of ~$50-60/MWh ... OVER 25 years! ... to recover just the fixed costs.

For West Texas, prices averaged mid-$30s over the last year.

Microsoft has all of the leverage here, and Chevron wants a big announcement in an area where they don't have a lot of experience.

Its origin is traced back to a 1929 company, Solar Aircraft Company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Turbines

Basically most projects start with the wind company using its own money to find a site and get it approved and then they go and try to find someone to sell the electricity to at a fixed rate before construction begins as selling directly to the spot market has way too much risk for the banks to give loans.

Not sure how different it is in Central Europe with solar as there isn’t much solar up here in the north (just doesn’t make much sense as during the 3 to 4 months in the winter when electricity price is at the yearly maximum you produce effectively nothing)

Many investments won't pay off unless there is a 30 year plan so lots of investors work on that long term. Even if an investment pays off sooner you often are accounting better off longer terms - see an accountant

Look at the map for 2026 of the grid buildout in Texas at the bottom of this page:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205

All solar and batteries (yellow and black), with a few tiny blue dots for gas. It was the same story in 2025. And it will be the same story in 2027 because solar and batteries are getting even cheaper.

These are all decisions from private investors, trying to make money, and choosing solar and batteries over gas in the market where gas is the cheapest in the world, gas is like a waste product that's hard to get rid of.

Why would Microsoft choose dirty energy when all the profit-driven investors are choosing cheaper solar and storage?

Perhaps Microsoft had better ability to overturn local opposition to data centers if they had Chevron's political influence over the politicians too?

So Texas is not a laggard when it comes to clean energy, they are actually driving clean energy forward the most, because clean energy is the cheapest and most profitable energy. And that's despite Texas having natural gas that's insanely cheap right from Henry Hub.

What this tells me is that like most hyperscalers, Microsoft is not price sensitive on the electricity side, because energy costs are tiny compared to the massive capital costs of the GPUs. But why would they go this direction? What political influence would make Microsoft choose more expensive electricity, when in the past they've been fairly good at driving clean energy forward in their data center power choices, and they'd pay a premium on energy costs to go with clean energy?