Amazon Confirms GW Ranch, an 8,000-Acre Off-Grid Texas Data Center

Amazon has confirmed it owns GW Ranch, an 8,000-acre data center campus 11 miles north of Fort Stockton in Pecos County, Texas, built around a private 7.65-gigawatt natural gas plant that never touches the ERCOT grid. Market intelligence firm Cleanview traced Amazon to the site through three newly filed data center construction permits before Amazon confirmed the acquisition directly, telling Construction Review Online the campus is “powered by new on-site generation that won’t raise electricity costs for Texas families.”

Why it matters

For developers chasing AI-infrastructure sites, GW Ranch is the clearest signal yet that power, not entitlements, decides where hyperscale campuses land. Amazon is not waiting in a Texas interconnection queue at all. It bought land with an independent power plant already permitted and is building three data center buildings on top of it, a behind-the-meter model that skips the wait entirely rather than jumping the line. Track the broader pattern at our data centers hub.

The numbers

The gas plant, developed by Pacifico Energy, is permitted for 35 turbines generating up to 7.65 gigawatts, with plans for up to 750 megawatts of on-site solar and 1.8 gigawatts of battery storage layered on top. Amazon has filed permits for three 189,000-square-foot data center buildings on the site. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has issued an air permit allowing up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, roughly double the ceiling at the most polluting coal plant in the country.

What’s next

Amazon says the campus is designed to “transition to grid-connected service as interconnection timelines allow,” meaning GW Ranch could eventually feed power back into ERCOT rather than staying fully isolated. Satellite imagery already shows land clearing underway, and Amazon is targeting first power in the first quarter of 2027. Watch whether other hyperscalers follow Amazon’s lead and start buying merchant gas capacity outright instead of waiting on utilities.