CyrusOne Breaks Ground on 380MW Data Center Campus Co-Located With Texas Natural Gas Plant
June 8, 2026
CyrusOne Breaks Ground on 380MW Data Center Campus Co-Located With Texas Natural Gas Plant
CyrusOne has begun construction on a major new data center development in Texas, marking a significant step in the growing trend of data centers being built directly alongside power generation assets. The project, located in Freestone County roughly 90 miles south of Dallas, is part of a broader strategy to secure reliable, large-scale energy for increasingly power-hungry AI and cloud computing workloads.
The company broke ground last week on the campus, which is being developed adjacent to the Calpine-operated Freestone Energy Center, a 1GW natural gas-fired combined-cycle facility. While full details of the planned development have not been disclosed, CyrusOne earlier this year signed a 380MW agreement with Constellation to connect and serve a new data center at the site. The two companies subsequently signed a second agreement for an additional 380MW at the same location, underscoring the scale of the planned build-out.
Calpine secured regulatory approval to co-locate a data center at the Freestone site around May of this year. The energy center itself sits on approximately 506 acres near Fairfield, Texas, providing ample room for the large-scale campus. This approach to co-location allows data center operators to bypass grid constraints and secure dedicated, behind-the-meter power, a model that is gaining traction across the US as utilities struggle to meet surging demand from the digital economy.
KKR-owned CyrusOne currently operates more than 50 data centers across the US and European markets. In Texas alone, the company has more than 14 facilities—both planned and operational—with over half concentrated around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The company is also developing a 400MW campus adjacent to Calpine’s Thad Hill Energy Center in Bosque County, where the first data center is under construction and expected to come online by the fourth quarter of 2026.
The Freestone County project highlights a broader industry shift toward integrating data center infrastructure with on-site or adjacent power generation, particularly natural gas plants, to ensure energy availability and cost predictability. As hyperscale cloud providers and AI developers continue to expand, this model is likely to become more common, especially in regions like Texas where energy markets and regulatory environments support such arrangements.
Source: datacenterdynamics
