FO Permian Partners and HiVolt Energy Data Center, Midland County, Texas

FO Permian Partners and HiVolt Energy hold an option on 320 acres about 30 minutes southeast of downtown Midland, in Midland County, Texas, which they are marketing as an off-grid data center site powered by local natural gas. No data center company had signed on when the partners announced the site in September 2025. FO Permian co-founder Davis Farish said at the time, "we still have a steep hill to climb to attract a premier data center builder to West Texas."

The first phase would offer 150 megawatts of power generated on-site rather than drawn from the grid, about what the whole city of Midland uses in its lowest-demand winter hours, according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram. HiVolt, an independent power producer, would run natural-gas engines backed by a battery system; the site is part of a larger 3,200-acre tract, and the partners say more than 5 gigawatts of gas supply stands behind it. Farish put the construction and hardware investment at nearly $4.5 billion.

Both firms are based in Midland. HiVolt's chief commercial officer Andy Deck said that mattered: "A lot of times, big projects like this, people take a lot of value out of the Permian Basin. We liked the ability to keep value in the Permian Basin."

Water is the local worry. The partners say the site has established industrial water supplies, and in May 2026 Midland Mayor Lori Blong said the city should not sell data centers municipal water: "I believe the only appropriate way for data centers to be developed in West Texas is for them to solve their own water solutions and their own power solutions, and that it be out away from neighborhoods and families."

Midland County Judge Terry Johnson said three different data center groups, all describing closed-loop cooling and on-site gas generation, have approached the county. "These folks want to be good neighbors, so they're always trying to improve what they're doing," Johnson said.

Midland's officials have set out conditions rather than rules: developers should bring their own power and their own water, and build away from homes. The next decisions are in Austin: the Public Utility Commission of Texas is collecting water-use data from data centers and must report to state leaders by the end of 2026, and data center power and water are expected to come before the Texas Legislature in 2027. On September 21, 2026, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to stop issuing new permits for data centers until ERCOT and the Texas Water Development Board finish auditing the industry, a pause that would apply to this project if it moves toward construction.