Memphis residents have criticized state grid operator the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for granting Elon Musk’s xAI access to 150MW of additional power for the company’s Colossus supercomputer.

TVA’s board approved the request, which came via energy company Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW), at a meeting on Thursday.

xAI launched Colossus, which is being used to train and run the company’s AI chatbot, Grok, earlier this year. It is housed in a former Electrolux factory on an industrial park at Paul Lowry Road, in southwest Memphis.

Musk has proclaimed the machine will be the world’s fastest AI supercomputer, and last month said he was doubling its compute power to 200,000 Nvidia Grace Hopper GPUs.

This means the site needs a lot of power, and earlier this year it was revealed MLGW had agreed to supply xAI with 150MW, subject to approval from TVA.

TVA powers up xAI in Memphis

Though TVA board members noted concerns about the environmental impact of Colossus, they gave MLGW the green light to supply the additional power, pointing out that xAI had pledged to construct the world’s largest ceramic membrane greywater facility in the city to improve the quality of drinking water, as well as providing discounted Tesla Megapack battery storage to improve stability of the Memphis power grid.

But the news has not been well received by citizens rights groups and environmental campaigners, who are concerned about the strain the site is putting on the city’s power grid and the poor air quality in the area.

KeShaun Pearson, president of Memphis Community Against Pollution, said: “The ongoing policy violence that allows xAI to continue the consistent damaging of our lungs in Southwest Memphis is immoral, we deserve clean air, not silent strangulation.”

Pearson added that the TVA board “must do its job to sustainably serve its community and study the environmental implications of giving xAI an additional 150MW of power in an already energy burdened and over-polluted community of people whose lives have been sacrificed for generations.”

Last year TVA proposed building additional natural gas-powered turbines for the region last October because it said it was unable to meet demand. These would supply an additional 200MW. Campaigners believe this evidence that the grid is not ready to sustain the power demands of xAI.

“We are alarmed that the TVA Board rubberstamped xAI’s request for power without studying the impact it will have on local communities,” Amanda Garcia, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said. “Last year, TVA questioned power reliability and proposed a new dirty gas plant in South Memphis, and today Board members expressed concern about the impact large industrial energy users have on power bills across the Tennessee Valley. TVA should be prioritizing families over data centers like xAI.”

Rita Harris, chair of the Sierra Club Chickasaw Group, an environmental advocacy organization, added: “Selling electricity to the highest bidder without any concern for negative impacts on low-wealth and people-of-color neighborhoods should not be how TVA operates. When there are negative or dangerous impacts, the precautionary principle should be considered to safeguard already vulnerable people.”

A statement from TVA said: “Part of TVA’s core mission is to work with partners to bring investment and jobs to communities across our region. In every case, we carefully review the details of each company’s proposal and the associated electricity demand needs.

“These partnerships include maximizing demand response opportunities, which support system flexibility when peak demand gets high. We appreciate MLGW’s partnership. We are committed to providing all customers with affordable, reliable energy.”

A colossal investment

Currently, the data center that houses Colossus only has 8MW of power available from the grid, but xAI appears to have temporarily solved this problem by drafting in 14 mobile generators from Voltagrid, each of which is capable of providing 2.5MW, giving it an additional 35MW.

MLGW will now upgrade the site's capacity to 50MW in a project that will cost taxpayers $760,000, while xAI is pledging to spend $24 million on a new substation that will enable it to receive an additional 150MW. MLGW CEO Doug McGowen said previously that the company believes it can complete this project more quickly and cheaply than MLGW.

xAI is set to receive monthly rebates from the utility company until its costs are recouped and MLGW would then take ownership of the substation.

While the arrival of xAI has been hailed by business leaders in Memphis as the largest multi-billion dollar investment in the city’s history, campaigners have previously criticized the project’s impact on air quality, saying it will have “harmful consequences” for residents.

Last month, xAI and Nvidia revealed the machine's GPUs are linked using the Nvidia Spectrum-X ethernet networking platform for its Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) network.