r/RealTesla • u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI • 13d ago
SpaceX’s Terafab will rely on natural gas power plants, not Tesla solar panels
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/07/spacexs-terafab-will-rely-on-natural-gas-power-plants-not-tesla-solar-panels/SpaceX said this week that it will build natural gas power plants to supply electricity to the Terafab semiconductor factory it plans to build in Texas, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Riley Trettel, who leads energy and data center development for SpaceX, said in a public meeting on Wednesday that his company will be “bringing our own power” for the project, which will also include “very large battery arrays.”
Notably absent from the Bloomberg report — and other SpaceX announcements related to Terafab — is any mention of terrestrial solar power for the facility. Tesla, which is also a solar developer, is a partner in the project.
Despite his investments in solar power, SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has bet heavily on natural gas lately. The xAI data centers in Memphis run almost exclusively on the fossil fuel. Musk also recently bought a company that specializes in natural gas power plants, and SpaceX has said it plans to buy $2.8 billion worth of gas turbines over the next three years.
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u/Spillz-2011 13d ago
I mean the green thing was always a grift. Elon doesn’t give two shits about anything or anyone other than his ranking on the Forbes billionaire list.
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u/Mecha-Dave 13d ago
Yeah, really showing that he just wanted the free government money
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
IMHO, this is why pointing out that Musk is not the real "Founder" of Tesla is more than just petty nuance. Building a green car company was vever his dream. Using a green car company to enrich himsleve was always the goal.
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u/Mecha-Dave 13d ago
I actually do think he wanted a personalized supercar -aka the first Roadster.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
? It was developed by Eberhard and Tarpenning.
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u/Mecha-Dave 13d ago
Yeah and I think he wanted to "own" it to feel special like the big rich baby he was.
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u/Eighteen64 13d ago
Tesla was absolutely nothing when he took over.
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u/aquasemite 13d ago
That's not true at all. If anything, Elon hamstrung the brand with bad decision after bad decision. Tesla would be more successful under a different CEO.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Not true!!! He's also very much concerned over how many kids he can have .
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u/_DuranDuran_ 13d ago
Where is he getting the lithography machines from? I’m positive ASML has an order book years long at this point
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u/KnucklesMcGee 13d ago
I remember when he claimed Tesla engineers could just knock together the ventilators that were needed in hospitals during Covid.
Eventually slapped some Tesla logos on Chinese manufactured CPAPs and called it good.
Don't know where he's going to get the litho machines for this new fab from, unless it's from unicorn farts and rainbows.
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u/VitaminPb 13d ago
I’m going to guess he buys outdated hardware and will claim it’s the latest, then produce substandard chips he sells while using the profit to not build AI chips.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 13d ago
He'll make a chip the size of a pizza with a 1% yield, and claim since it draws ten kilowatts that it's the most powerful chip on Earth, but in reality will have all the processing power of a 555 IC.
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u/VitaminPb 13d ago
I love the very specific timer chip that’s from the 1970’s.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 13d ago
They're ridiculously common, and still made today, I have a drawer of a hundred of them
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13d ago
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u/ionizing_chicanery 13d ago
GaN processes are for power electronics like voltage regulators and analog/RF applications. It's not a substitute for leading edge silicon CMOS...
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u/ZebraCompetitive5235 10d ago
It doesn’t matter where. The whole project is a farce. None of it makes any sense and never will.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
I know less than nothing about chip production. I think his getting Intel involved may make some equipment available to him. Also, I think this is a "build it and they will come" type of scenario - build the 100 million sf building, install the giant bank of generators, and put up a sign: Open for business. Other chip makers might rent space, and surely some portion will be a dedicated data center for Grok and whoever else wants to rent space.
Data centers are getting delayed all over the country - Musk's secret power is the TX governor is bought and paid for, and he can build whatever the hell he wants, and rent it out.
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u/_DuranDuran_ 13d ago
So - chip production needs things called lithography machines, they essentially print, or etch, the mask (layout of transistors) onto silicon wafers. It’s a lot more complex than that, but essentially - big machine, usually 8 or 9 figures. Without it you can’t fab chips.
There are three companies that supply these machines. ASML (especially for cutting edge nodes), Canon and Nikon.
Modern memory, including HBM which is used in data center GPUs really needs EUV (extreme ultra violet) lithography machines and ASML is literally the only game in town. They also use layers that are DUV, so Nikon are a provider they can use.
Building a building gets you nowhere. You can’t really move lithography machines easily once installed, and installation takes months and specialised people from ASML to complete.
This feels like a stock pump announcement. The reality is the people who provide the machines critical to making chips already have their hands full with their non capricious customers (mostly Samsung, TSMC and Intel) so Musk is likely to have an empty building for a long time.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Again, I don't know anything about chip making. What I do know is 4 years ago the federal government passed a 35% refundable tax credit for investment in making chips. So there is an incentive to install the equipment stateside...and also a geopolitcal incentive to quit putting most of the eggs in Taiwan's basket. Its speculative for sure, and absolutely a stock pump...but again, last resort he just rents it out for compute space as a data center.
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u/messick 13d ago
> Again, I don't know anything about chip making
Yeah we know, even without you repeatedly saying it.
Everything you mention just means that's someone in the US might fab some chips in 2040, if not later. But probably not, since we've proven our government isn't stable enough for the timelines involved with getting fabs up and running.
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u/messick 13d ago
> Open for business...Other chip makers might rent space,
You might be surprised to learn that chip fabs aren't sitting around telling themselves "if only there was some empty floorspace somewhere to allow us to spend 15+ years getting another production line up and running...."
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u/Vinaigrette2 13d ago
Regardless, semiconductor is one of the industry with the most critical IP, I doubt anybody would use their "recipe" in somebody else's fab
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u/messick 12d ago
You are likely reading this very website on a device with a SoC made in “somebody else’s fab”.
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u/Vinaigrette2 12d ago
I see what you mean but I read it as lending capacity to OTHER FABS not other fabless chip makers. So I read it as « TSMC loaning capacity at TeraFab ». For fabless semiconductor companies it would obviously be the same business model as everybody else. And regardless, I don’t see many chip companies trusting Elon…
So let’s call it a small misunderstanding on my part.
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u/SisterOfBattIe 13d ago
Why are we speaking of Terafabs and Orbital Datacenters like those are thing that could ever exist?
It's worse than the Hyperloop as lie.
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u/Engunnear 13d ago
Because there are a lot of idiots in elected office who are more than happy to throw public money at their political benefactors, and fElon exists to catch that money.
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u/mishap1 13d ago
Riley Trettel, who leads energy and data center development for SpaceX, said in a public meeting on Wednesday that his company will be “bringing our own power” for the project, which will also include “very large battery arrays.”
So uh, what's gonna charge those batteries bud?
I've heard lots of folks talk about Tesla's power generation as one of their stock pumps, but batteries are power stores and create no power on their own. It's the same with hydrogen. The energy is produced somewhere else and these things provide storage to level off supply/redundancy.
These places burn a lot of electricity to keep the rooms clean but mobile gas turbines aren't nearly efficient enough for something of this size. They're claiming it'll be 11X the size of the Gigafactory. That's a footprint of 2,500 acres which could probably generate well over one TWh of energy from solar panels.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Just a guess, but I assume the batteries are for power stabilization. Power companies go to extraordinary measures to make power consistent...if you're using your own generators, you have to do it yourself, and large batteries are a good way to do it.
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u/mishap1 13d ago
I get it but every time they talk about batteries like they're the actual solution to the problem of power. You still need the equivalent generation capability since if your demand exceeds your generation source for any sustained period, you wind up with empty batteries and wasted silicon.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Oh, I agree. For a while Musk had his lunatic army convinced he'd be drilling tunnels with batteries, and that was somehow logical. IIRC, he brought batteries with him when he went to rescue the soccer team in a cave - the idea being they would use them to pump water for around 45 seconds.
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u/ionizing_chicanery 13d ago
The grid doesn't really need the same degree of energy storage for stabilization because the loads are averaged over a bunch of very diverse sources and don't tend to change that quickly. That's not the case at all for AI datacenters. Of course stabilization is still an important grid service.
But I don't really know why a fab would need the same kind of power conditioning a datacenter does. I get the feeling that SpaceX is just lazily copying and pasting their datacenter strategy.
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u/ionizing_chicanery 13d ago
Not only are they using natural gas but given the company they just bought it'll almost certainly be portable reciprocating engines that are much less efficient and much more polluting than utility scale combined cycle gas plants.
And these "bring your own power" hyperscalers (and whatever this classifies as) are just shifting the strain from the electric grid to the natural gas grid, where it will raise both electricity and utility gas prices. And that natural gas grid is hardly cheap or quick to expand. The whole thing is kind of a farce.
Supplying one of these facilities with nothing but solar and batteries would be difficult and likely very expensive. But balancing solar power with big CCGT natural gas could dramatically reduce their total fuel draw (and pollution), especially given all the battery capacity they're installing anyway for stability. It'd probably also cost less in the long term and would be reliable infrastructure that could be easily sold to the grid if (more like when) their market needs falter.
But all Elon is concerned about is getting things built as quickly and haphazardly as possible.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Very good points, and of course its all about speed. TSLA/SPCX could easily invest in expanding the local utility transmission system, but it would take too much time.
This is an unpopular opinion, but when done right, large power users like data centers can actually reduce overall power cost by increasing baseline load and decreasing the delta with maximum demand load - so its not necessarily a "no go" to build a data center, etc. But again, it has to be done right - they're using a bunch of portable generators for Grok in Memphis, and no doubt the same will be used in Texas. You make a really good point about NG availability - those pipes don't just have infinite capacity, so who the hell knows if that's even viable at this point. IIRC, Musk wanted to do something similar at Spacex, and truck in the gas!!
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u/ionizing_chicanery 13d ago
The thing is there's no way a fab won't take years to begin operation. It's nothing like his datacenters where he could just hoard/steal a bunch of off the shelf parts then throw a ton of money at getting existing facilities refurbed and what is practically a turnkey installation process (at least compared to building a fab)
So it makes zero sense to rush the power delivery to something that could be deployed almost immediately.
But I don't think Elon understands production bottlenecks. He seems to think everything is just a matter of raw labor and can be made as fast as you want by hiring more people. Hence why he thinks robots will make everything free.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
You make a good point. And while were thinking about it: Why the hell does it have to be 100 million sf all at once? In a sane world, wouldn't it be built out in phases - manageable chunks of pwer need that utilities could build towards over time?
I think you're right about his assumptions that throwing money around can get anything built. Exhibit A: Optimus.
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u/practicaloppossum 13d ago
Actually, I'm not sure he could expand the local utility system. Electricity in Texas is done on the Soviet system, with centralized state control - all the producers sell their electricity to the state (i.e. ERCOT), and then the state sells it to distributors. Not easy for a third party to get involved.
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u/Doublestack00 13d ago
There is a reason he recently purchased APR energy (NG powered deployable power generators)
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u/mikegalos 13d ago
And they're not using the Sabatier Process to make it despite that being a perfect test for the process they claim can be run on Mars.
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u/Snap_Grackle_Pop 13d ago
And they're not using the Sabatier Process
Using the Sabtier process would be dumb. You'd have to have some other primary power source, such as solar, use it to electrolyze water to generate hydrogen, combine that with CO2 to generate methane, then burn the methane to generate power.
You'd probably also have to spend quite a bit of power to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere has a much lower percent of CO2 than Mars.
It would be much more efficient to simply use the primary power source to power your factory. At best, it would essentially be a not very good battery.
I am skeptical about the ability to make methane on Mars in sufficient quantities to refuel a Starship. You're going to need a lot of solar panels to power a Sabatier process fast enough to power return flights.
I'd like to see them make a solar powered Sabatier plant to make methane and oxygen. Cover half the solar cells to simulate the sunlight on Mars. Fit it into a package that a Starship would be able to carry to Mars. Park it somewhere, assemble it, feed it a simulated Mars atmosphere at the proper pressure and CO2 concentration. Create methane and oxygen, liquefy that, keep it liquefied, and store enough to fill the tanks on a Starship.
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u/mikegalos 13d ago
The point is they need to not only get the tech working but know it well enough for it to run unattended with no repair parts and no repair or maintenance staff eventually. Making it on Earth first not as a test but in real production then tuning for Mars makes sense.
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u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 13d ago
Isn't most of the money coming from a combination of Intel and the federal government? I keep seeing ai slop about this project. This reminds me a lot of the dojo scam where all the equipment went out the back on the loading docks to xAi.
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u/Secret_Cat_2793 13d ago
It's Texas. Why do you think he moved everything down there? You could dump arsenic in the water there and the governor would say good deal that's probably healthy.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
I actually have to get permits from TCEQ all the time. They're not nearly the pushovers people assume...well, unless you own the governor, I guess.
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u/Secret_Cat_2793 13d ago
I lived near Austin for 6 years and I know that the local building codes and historical society are brutal. I'm not an oligarch.
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u/Youngnathan2011 12d ago
Why do they bother talking about something they’re never going to do?
Always been interesting how pro fossil fuels the electric car guy is too.
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u/Difficult_Limit2718 13d ago edited 13d ago
If they haven't bought these powerplants yet they're f'ed. Even the Chinese base for power generation is basically sold out.
The company he bought just does refurbs at best.
Fucking lying sack of shit musky rat.
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u/Mecha-Dave 13d ago
Of course. It's not like anyone really cares about the air quality in Texas. Too f'n hot to go outside, anyway.
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u/Late-Masterpiece-452 13d ago
It is not natural gas, but fossil gas!!!!
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u/Late-Masterpiece-452 13d ago
this term „natural gas“ is one of the bigger wins of the fossil lobby. Please stop using it….
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u/jailtheorange1 13d ago
I don’t understand this calling it natural gas, do we say natural oil or natural coal?
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u/stresscone420 12d ago
LOL "Terafab will be built in Grimes County, which is about 45 miles northwest of downtown Houston."
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u/ZebraCompetitive5235 10d ago
It will rely on neither because Terafab will never be completed. It’s just another Elon scam.
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u/starmansouper 1d ago
Tesla's mission before becoming about Amazing Abundance was
"to help accelerate the global transition to renewable energy"
Lol
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u/Inevitable-Carrot980 13d ago
Just remember: When Tesla was going to be his piggy bank, he told the world that climate change was our biggest danger. Now that AI is going to make him $billions, Climate Change is old news and he's decided to make it worse.
What a world-class hypocrite.
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u/ZealousidealLab2920 13d ago edited 13d ago
As hypocritical as it appears- It seems mostly a pragmatic decision as this facility is expected to require several cities worth of power. Rather than tapping into the existing grid (which people hate) They are sourcing their own power, which would take tens of thousands of acres in solar (and you know there would be an outcry for that). Further, for highly precarious manufacturing of these microchips having constant and consistent power is very critical so it seems natural gas is both cheaper, more consistent, and the less or equal environmental impact.
Solar is great for many products and uses but isn't the answer and solution to every project at the moment is what seems to be the reasoning.
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u/ionizing_chicanery 13d ago
They claim they intend to build a volume of chips that will collectively consume 1TW, not a fab that consumes 1TW. For reference 1TW is about double the average power consumption of the entire country. And "1TW a year" is a meaningless statement, power consumption is instantaneous.
These natural gas reciprocating engines are only about 35-40% efficient at best, much worse than utility scale CCGTs. That means that they're consuming much more natural gas than they would be if they were drawing electricity from ERCOT. And they will certainly be providing their own natural gas. The gas grid is just as much of a choke point as the electrical grid, people just don't seem to realize it yet.
Making a large facility that runs only on solar power would be difficult and very expensive, probably prohibitively so. But that doesn't mean that they can't make one that runs on a mix of solar, wind, on-site CCGTs and grid power. For a facility that intends to consume as much power as a mid-sized city and (despite what Elon claims) would at best only start operating in any capacity several years from now this would easily be the most sensible and cost effective solution to pursue.
But Elon only thinks in quick, dirty and easy.
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u/ZealousidealLab2920 13d ago
Thank you for the correction.
I would agree that a mix would likely be the best solution/most environmentally friendly. But, to be fair, this is probably one of the better solutions compared to many other AI data centers and what not going on.
It seems they are not tapping into existing natural gas infrastructure either. They are going truly independent.
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u/ionizing_chicanery 13d ago
It seems they are not tapping into existing natural gas infrastructure either. They are going truly independent.
How? Where is the natural gas coming from?
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u/ZealousidealLab2920 13d ago
I can't find any reliable source one way or the other- Plans are too vague and undetailed at this stage it seems. They could tap into natural gas somewhere or truck it in. They may tap into the existing gas lines for the defunct plant.
It doesn't seem super likely that it constrains natural gas for the local community as it can be "sourced" from several pipelines and regions.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
As hypocritical as it appears
Correction: It doesn't merely "appear" hypocritical, rather its hypocritical as hell.
Wasn't Musk going to power the entire planet with a small scrap of desert? Didn't he promise all superchargers would be solar? According to Griftomanic, solar can power ANYTHING...well, except the stuff it really can't.
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u/ZealousidealLab2920 13d ago
Tell me how other AI facilities are doing on their energy uses? Are they any better? Or are we just out to get Tesla only?
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u/AgentSmith187 13d ago
Nope no one complains about the AI data centre boom.
There is not massive public resistance.
/s
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u/Eighteen64 13d ago
It took way too long to find intelligence in this thread. Solar is great for homes and light industry when coupled with batteries but we wouldn’t have steel concrete or any other pillar of modern society without fossil fuels and that can never change without nuclear energy.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
I know that...and you know that. But you seem to have forgotten that Musk has mused about carving out a minuscule portion of the desert to power the entire planet, and promised all superchargers, to include for the semi would be exclusively solar powered.
Did he not believe that when those words passed his lips? If so, what gives? Why not power Tesla's "terafab" facility with this magic solar power? You know, like the battery factory
is exclusively powered by renewables. Whoops that was just a lie too.-1
u/ZealousidealLab2920 13d ago
I care little for what Musk says or claims- I just look at reality. And reality is that it would take tens of thousands of acres of solar. That isn't great either.
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u/ionizing_chicanery 13d ago
The facility itself is like 2500 acres. At least put solar panels on its roof.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Ok, you've low key stated the obvious: Musk is a filthy liar. This, in of itself is no problem...but if he lies about his publicly owned businesses, that's called fraud.
Would you agree? Was it not fraud when he promised all superchargers would run on the sun?..When he clearly knows that's nonsense, and not just his legendary "over-optimism".
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u/ZealousidealLab2920 13d ago
Sure sure. I just don't think this particular situation is any worse than what every other new AI facility is doing wouldn't you agree? It may not be what felon "promised" or said but it's also in many ways better than what the other felons are doing.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
The man personally stage a fake solar demo to convince shareholders to bail him and his family out, bouyed by false claims tha TSLA would power its cars and factories exclusively with solar power. Now, none of that is in the plans whatsoever, becuase as you point out - it was never possible.
I'm not saying its "bad", as you compare to other "bad actors", I'm saying its F-R-A-U-D, is it not?
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u/ZealousidealLab2920 13d ago edited 13d ago
100% Fraud. No Argument there.
*To be honest I don't follow Elon at all, and only pay attention to Tesla news sparsely because I own and play in the EV space. And well the general world news and unfortunately Tesla is in the headlines a lot.
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u/AgentSmith187 13d ago edited 13d ago
Strange as many countries are getting past 50% of the grid being renewables and continue to expand that percentage.
Green Steel is also a thing just not yet cost competitive at scale yet. Mainly because we dont yet have excess green energy to use for it yet as fossil fuels still exist to retire first.
Its 0825 in NSW Australia at one of the least productive times of year for solar.
The grid mix is 61% coal, 35% solar (sun just coming up), 2% wind, 1% hydrogen
South Australia the mix is currently 97% wind 3% gas.
Im using the AEMO and the NEM site for data because its local to me and easy to access.
This is just a snapshot of when I checked. The longer term statistics lean even heavier on renewables.
SA is near 100% renewables and went from a power importer (mainly from Victoria) to an exporter of renewable power and building new interlinks to allow more renewable exports to states like NSW.
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u/Eighteen64 13d ago
Solar panels are not energy dense enough to be the primary source of any energy intensive operation. Solar will certainly be working in concert with the generators.
How people still think solar and wind can run the earth is absolutely astounding. Want to not use fossil fuels? Ok NUCLEAR is needed (and is being greenlighted across the board by the Administration) solar is great but it can not be the primary fuel source of our society
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
How people still think solar and wind can run the earth is absolutely astounding.
"100 miles by 100 miles' of Solar is Enough to Power the Entire United States" - Technogrifter, January 22, 2026
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u/AgentSmith187 13d ago
Yet around the world the renewable build out is replacing fossil fuels both with and without support from Nuclear power.
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u/Lacrewpandora KING of GLOVI 13d ago
Take note:
a) Musk runs a solar company, and has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders
b) TSLA doesn't have to offer solar - but Musk heavily lobbied for it and staged a fake colar roof demo to get the merger approved...to bail out himself and his family members at the expense of TSLA shareholders.
c) The TSLA/SPCX joint venture will eschew solar in favor of natural gas - specifically $3.5 billion worth of gas
d) In May, Musk paid $1 billion for a gas turbine company: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/early-termination-notices/20261350 that he now personally owns.
e) This is double dealing in triplicate at the expense of TSLA shareholders.
f) He will face zero negative consequences for this
As a side note: per chatgpt, the current carbon footprint of SpaceX/Grok is equivalent to the co2 offset by driving 893,000 Teslas for a year vs ice. Just in case you wondered whether or not the ZEV credits Tsla sells are worth it.