Taylor City Council voted 5-0 on Oct. 8 to annex and approve a development agreement for Taylor Technology Campus, a 664-acre hyperscale project east of Taylor that Big Watt Digital and PowerHouse Data Centers say could support up to one giga
Rendering of a PowerHouse data center campus developmentwatt. The partners announced the approval in a Business Wire release.
The site, known as Project Mustang before it was renamed, sits between FM 112 and US 79 in Williamson County, about eight miles from Samsung's $17 billion semiconductor plant. It calls for data center buildings backed by dedicated, behind-the-meter natural gas generation rather than the ERCOT grid.
That is the crux of the deal.
Running its own power plant lets the campus avoid an interconnection queue that now stretches for years in Texas, where the grid operator is tracking about 438,000 MW of large-load requests, nearly 89 percent of them data centers, according to w.media.
First power is targeted for the first half of 2028, with construction running from 2027 to 2029. The agreement commits the developers to limits the surrounding county could not impose: noise capped at 65 dBA or the pre-development level, closed-loop cooling on reclaimed water with an initial fill of 1.575 million gallons, and buffers of 300 feet on three sides and 700 feet along the southern property line.
Big Watt and PowerHouse also pledged $28.2 million in community investment, most of it for Taylor ISD programs and scholarships, and the city projects $1.38 billion in gross tax revenue over 20 years.
The approval reverses a retreat. The developers withdrew their annexation and zoning application on Sept. 3 after the Planning and Zoning Commission tabled the project and residents organized against it, and the city reopened talks to keep the site inside its regulatory reach.
"Austin is one of the most dynamic technology markets in the country, and the Taylor Technology Campus project gives us a strategically positioned platform to support the next generation of AI and hyperscale computing while delivering meaningful economic benefits to Taylor and the broader region," said Keith Meyer, Big Watt Digital president.
PowerHouse Data Centers, a division of American Real Estate Partners, holds roughly 10 GW across nine markets, while Big Watt has more than 2 GW under construction across Texas and South Dakota. Combined, the partners cite 12 GW in active development.
Baxtel tracks 99 data center facilities across the Austin market, operated by 37 providers, with 28 under construction.
Taylor is the latest test of a model spreading fast in Texas: skip the grid, build the gas plant, and trade binding local rules for the right to build at scale. The terms show what a city can extract once a developer needs annexation to reach a gigawatt, and they set a benchmark that other Williamson County projects will be measured against.
For hyperscalers chasing speed, behind-the-meter generation buys time but not a free pass. The projects that move in ERCOT will be the ones that bring their own electrons and accept water, noise and setback limits up front.
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