Data centers turn to commercial aircraft jet engines bolted onto trailers as AI power crunch bites — cast-off turbines generate up to 48 MW of electricity apiece

Faced with multi-year delays to secure grid power, US data center operators are deploying aeroderivative gas turbines — effectively retired commercial aircraft engines bolted into trailers — to keep AI infrastructure online.

According to IEEE Spectrum, facilities in Texas are already spinning up units based on General Electric’s CF6-80C2 and LM6000, the same turbine cores once found on 767s and Airbus A310s. Vendors like ProEnergy and Mitsubishi Power have turned these into modular, fast-start…