AI 数据中心因电网接入排队改用改装喷气发动机发电
Data centers are turning to old jet engines as the wait for power grows
AI 导读
据《纽约时报》报道，部分 AI 数据中心因电网接入和新涡轮机交付需排队数年，开始用退役飞机发动机改装成燃气发电机组自建电力。
摘要与补充说明
Rystad Energy 分析师 Audun Martinsen 表示，这类机组可让数据中心在 24 个月内运行，而在北弗吉尼亚接入 100 兆瓦电网约需七年。xAI 已在密西西比州为孟菲斯的 Colossus 2 数据中心安装 8 台 ProEnergy 改装的 GE 发动机机组；Crusoe 在得州 Abilene 为 OpenAI 首个 Stargate 站点建设园区，并于 4 月订购 13 台同款机组。报道称这类机组效率更低、污染更多，且需要更多台才能发出同等电力，可能只是短期方案。
正文
Stuck in years-long lines for grid connections and new turbines, some AI data centers are making their own electricity with converted jet engines, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The engines, pulled from retired aircraft and rebuilt to burn natural gas, aren’t anyone’s idea of a permanent power plant. But they’re another sign of how far power supply has fallen behind the AI buildout.
For companies stuck in those lines, the main draw of converted jet engines is how quickly the engines can be up and running. “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.
Hooking up 100 megawatts to the grid in Northern Virginia, by comparison, takes about seven years, according to the International Energy Agency. Most power capacity is expected to come on by 2031, an executive at Mitsubishi Power, one of the world’s top makers of power generation equipment told Bloomberg last week.
In some cases, these delays are already costing some data center operators business. Last month, Microsoft pulled out as the anchor customer for Nscale’s data center in Loughton, England, after the local utility said it couldn’t deliver enough power until the early-to-mid 2030s.
Elon Musk’s xAI is among the companies already using the engines, having installed eight converted jet-engine turbines in Mississippi to help power its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, the Times reported, citing state permits and satellite imagery. The units come from ProEnergy, which rebuilds a GE engine commonly found on Boeing jets.
In 2025, OpenAI followed Musk’s lead with gas turbines at its first Stargate site in Abilene, Texas. Crusoe, a Denver-based startup that builds AI data centers, is constructing that Abilene campus and ordered 13 of ProEnergy’s converted units in April.
In September, Crusoe walked away from a $1.25 billion deal to buy 29 natural gas turbines from Boom Supersonic, a startup developing a supersonic passenger jet that has also begun selling a version of that jet’s engine as a power plant for data centers. A Crusoe spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time that the company still plans to use turbines.
Currently the Trump administration is adding to the pressure by encouraging data centers to generate their own electricity.
Converted jet engines come with trade-offs, though: They’re less efficient and pollute more than turbines designed for conventional gas plants and it takes more of them to make the same amount of power, according to the Times. That may ultimately make converted jet engines a short-term play with some experts saying that efficiency and environmental concerns may grow in importance in a year or two.
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Aditya Mehta is a reporter at TechCrunch covering AI. He’s supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism and attended UC Berkeley. You can contact from Aditya by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at adymehta.74 on Signal.