A data center operating out of Oklahoma City’s former Chesapeake Energy campus is pursuing something most of its competitors in the state have avoided: its own power plant. Scale Datacenters has filed air quality permit applications for a 100-megawatt behind-the-meter facility in the heart of Oklahoma City that would let it generate electricity for its operations rather than draw from the grid, and the company says it plans to use generators imported from decommissioned power plants in Bulgaria to get there.
The filings, submitted to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality in September, are now under technical review, according to KGOU. Behind-the-meter facilities are data centers that unplug from the electric grid and rely on power they generate themselves for their own operations, the station reports. Scale Datacenters, which launched roughly two years ago, has been reusing buildings on the old Chesapeake Energy campus in Oklahoma City and currently employs 450 people. The company is also building a separate facility in southeast Oklahoma, and it plans to use new natural gas units to power its operations going forward.
Trevor Francis addressed Oklahoma lawmakers at an interim study in late September, where he was identified as Scale Datacenters’ CEO, per KGOU’s reporting. Elsewhere, however, Trevor Francis has been identified differently: a report from KOSU describes him as the CEO of 46 Labs when he spoke during the Oklahoma City Council’s April 2026 moratorium discussion; his later appearance before state lawmakers was a separate event. The discrepancy in Francis’s title underscores how fluid — and fast-moving — Oklahoma’s data center landscape has become this year.
Why Companies Are Looking Past the Grid
Scale Datacenters’ push for its own generation comes as natural gas infrastructure faces delivery delays stretching years, driven by manufacturing constraints and rising electricity demand nationwide, according to KGOU’s reporting. Rep. Brad Boles, a Republican from Marlow, has said it may take three to five years just to get the power infrastructure built for a behind-the-meter facility, as reported by Public Radio Tulsa. One researcher put it more bluntly, according to Public Radio Tulsa: if a data center is not already in line for a natural gas plant, it is probably not getting one until the 2030s…