Power plant for data center on 2,000 acres in Granbury goes to public hearing
The city of Granbury will hold public hearings Tuesday on rezoning 2,100 acres of recently annexed ranchland for a data center power plant, and new guidelines meant to mitigate the impact on neighboring properties.
Fears of a data center or other large-scale industrial development on the land, known as Knox Ranch, drew an overflow crowd of furious residents to a Jan. 6 council meeting when the city was considering the annexation. Elsewhere in Hood County, residents have waged wars against a Bitcoin mining plant 10 miles to the south and a recently proposed data center near Dinosaur Valley State Park.
Before unanimously approving the annexation in January, city officials assured the crowd that the property owners hadn’t contacted the city about what they intended to build. City leaders said annexation would allow them to have some control over what goes on the land.
Records from last summer show at least state regulators knew what was coming.
Dallas-based Bilateral Energy LLC applied in June for a permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to build “electric generating units” at 1225 Meadow Wood Road, in the center of the property. The agency approved the emissions permit in July for eight simple-cycle power turbines and 87 linear generators.
Bilateral Energy “designs and delivers private power infrastructure for today’s most demanding workloads — data centers, AI, and high-performance compute,” it’s website says. “Our mission is to enable energy independence at multi-gigawatt scale through onsite natural gas generation, while enhancing grid stability by alleviating transmission constraints and integrating intelligently with broader grid operation.”
The City Council is now proposing new design and operation standards for data centers and power plants within the city limits. The rules aim to address noise, lighting and concealing landscaping.
The public hearings Tuesday on the rezoning and the design standards are at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 116 W. Bridge St.