Posted on 08/04/2026 2:06:46 PM PDT by JeepersFreepers
OEM Bergen Engines has secured a contract to supply a 400MW power plant for a new AI data center on the US East Coast. Operating fully off grid in true islanded mode, it will be the first medium-speed reciprocating engine power plant in North America designed for AI-driven workloads.
The installation will utilize 36 × 11.2MW Bergen medium-speed, lean-burn gas engines, each paired with Marelli high-efficiency alternators. The first batch is scheduled to ship in December 2025.
(Excerpt) Read more at bergenengines.com ...
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Construction began in early 2025 despite not having final permits from the NJDEP, and has continued behind concrete walls with a completion goal of November 2026.
The data center is to be located in Vineland, NJ according to the website. Are there any freepers in NJ aware of the project?
Here are some images of the massive generators. Imagine 36 of them.
Just wait. Some Leftist creepozoid(s) will sue, charging Bergen Engines with hoarding electricity.
They will say that the Data Center and Bergen Engines are being selfish, and needs to “share” the electricity.
There’s probably some fine print that allows them to use the grid if the generators go down, which they will within a few weeks. Then NJ is on the hook.
It is so interesting that the same people who cared so much about us turning off a few lights, turning down our AC or buying more fuel efficient cars are the very people who are building the largest gratuitous energy guzzlers that the world has ever produced. Its ok to send a sky scraper to orbit every week. Its ok to run a 3 football field room of computers that throw off more heat than all the people of the state of Michigan put together. Global warming seems to have been called off. Or was it just a scam in the first place. They seem to think we don’t remember last year.
Sounds like they will be tapping into an existing natural gas pipeline, so not truly “off grid”.
Up in Alaska many of the small villages run off of one or two diesel Caterpillar engines (with a third as backup if the other two fail).
Would that be internal combustion engines??? Oh the horror!
Why can’t they go green and do battery power, with wind and solar or hydro electric with pump storage, or my final and only serious offer nuclear?
Why so much damn power needed, what is the heat rejection from all this (thinking)???! Now we need to talk climate change and gorbull warming....
I thought CO2 was bad?
These AI plants are owned by the very same people who championed the green movement. While have to suffer with unreliable unsustainable solar and wind they bask in the technology we used to enjoy and could afford.
Can anyone here refresh my memory as to how computers arrayed in a data center need so much electric?
Do super computers need to run at beliw zero refrigeration?
I guess low NOX gas turbines are too expensive for the?
Nope, no emissions here.
So much for gas heat and hot water for New Jersey...
the gazillions of nano-components in CPUs/GPUs and memory modules in a large data center [hundreds of tons of ‘em actually] are fundamentally nothing more than nano-toasters the way they consume electricity and transform it into waste heat ...
so for every megawatt/hour of electricity they consume, they emit a megawatt/hour of waste heat ... ultimately that waste heat has to be removed by a cooling system equal with cooling power equal to the amount of heat being removed ...
however, the cooling system itself consumes electricity and throws off roughly 30% of waste heat itself, UNLESS evaporative cooling is used, which is multiple times more efficient that gigantic air conditioners ... however, evaporative cooling consumes MASSIVE amounts of water, ejected into the atmosphere as humidity ... thus data centers that can use evaporative cooling consume massive amounts of both electricity and water ...
🙄
Ping!
Are those powered by solar and or wind?
The press release claims that they are an "island" separated from the grid. Having multiple generators allows for downtime for maintenance of individual generators while continually providing service for the data center.
Is this a serious question? These are sets of natural gas internal combustion engines each powering a generator.
Why not ONE medium sized CT?
"To safeguard the plant against extreme and continuous AI load fluctuations, the project will deploy Piller’s SHIELDX™ Dynamic Power Stabilization units. Using a combination of mechanical inertia and bi-directional active power modules, SHIELDX™ will manage both large sudden load steps and the rapid, frequent transients characteristic of AI workloads. By absorbing these fluctuations, SHIELDX™ reduces the ramp-rate demand placed on the engines, improves fuel efficiency, lowers operational stress, and optimizes maintenance cycles."
Interesting that they are using flywheels, not batteries.
(NG) Natural Gas.
It is clean burning.
I also live 14 miles from a AI/Power Plant in construction.
Early plant plans were for Uranium power, now I think they will initially set up with NG. Our NG does not go far by pipeline.
At the farm we use LP Gas for heat and cooking. And REA Electric for Lights and heating water. In the past there, we used LP gas to heat water.
This home is over 75 years old.
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