Nebius, a European corporation that creates cloud management systems for AI, will build its third — and largest — American data center in the city, with construction starting later this year.
The massive construction project will take over a significant portion of the Eastgate Commerce Center, an industrial park off of Little Blue Parkway and Missouri Highway 78 — but it’ll need a power source big enough to keep up with its work.
The $6.6 billion, 400-acre data center campus will go up alongside another massive city project — the reopening of a rebuilt and hugely expanded Blue Valley Power Plant, once a major industrial hub for Independence. The natural gas-fueled power plant will utilize 15 turbines in its first phase alone, which will generate about a quarter of the power eventually needed to support the AI data center.
Until the Blue Valley plant reopens next year, NextEra and Evergy will both provide power to the data center site.
Councilmember Bridget McCandless described the city’s energy agreements with Nebius as “a little complicated.” City officials began negotiating an agreement with Nebius for power services to the data center in mid-2025, city documents read.
The city’s contract says it will provide Nebius access to energy starting in 2026, but the Blue Valley power plant won’t reopen until October 2027.
A stopgap plan
Before the expanded power plant reopens, Independence is contracting with third-party energy providers to supply Nebius starting in June and going through October 2027, according to Interim City Manager Lisa Reynolds.
The plant will use up to 800 megawatts of energy at a time, which could power between 320,000 and 720,000 homes for an entire year.
The new power plant will open in stages, generating 250 megawatts of capacity by 2027 and up to 1100 by 2029.
Each contract will cover a specific amount of time, with NextEra and Evergy taking turns providing wattage to the massive data center. Evergy’s contributions will be part coal and natural gas energy and part wind energy, according to Reynolds.
The city’s agreements with both energy providers are known as “passthrough contracts,” meaning that the city is fronting the cost of the energy, which Nebius will then pay back, Reynolds said.
Independence residents’ electricity rates will not be impacted and are not expected to go up either during or after the transition, Reynolds said.
“This is just following through on the commitments that we have to provide that capacity prior to the plant coming online,” Reynolds said at a Jan. 20 meeting of the Independence City Council.
If Nebius were to pull out of the planned data center site for any reason, Reynolds said, construction would not continue but the company would still be on the hook to pay back the initial costs the city covered.
Where is the power coming from?
Independence Power and Light will pay for NextEra to provide $10.7 million of energy to the data center from June 2026 to May 2027, with Nebius reimbursing the costs.
The funding will be spread across two years of city budgets and will be split into two contracts reflecting two different energy rates as the data center grows.
A second set of contracts between the city and Evergy will last from June to November 2027, for about $5.6 million spread across two budget years. This chunk of power will be sourced mainly from two large wind farms across four counties in Oklahoma, along with a regional power grid covering 14 Midwest states, according to city documents.
Once the power plant is at full capacity, Nebius will take on the day-to-day cost of electricity for the data center with no direct impact on Independence customers or the city.
Both Evergy and NextEra were able to skip the majority of the city’s competitive bidding process for utility contracts because they are among the few power companies capable of providing a large amount of energy to the data center without interruption to their other customers, according to city documents.
The city had also reached out to a handful of providers including the Unified Government Board of Public Utilities, Missouri Public Utility Alliance and Kansas Municipal Energy Agency, city documents show.
Building a plant
The natural gas-fueled Blue Valley Power Plant will primarily be used to power the mammoth data center, but its rebuild was started months before Nebius came to Independence.
The plant was first built in 1958, according to the city, and previously closed in 2020. When it shut down, it was capable of generating 90 megawatts of energy, which pales in comparison to the 800 megawatt demand of the Nebius data center.
Though Nebius will drive the power plant rebuild forward by being its primary customer, the rebuild itself will be financed privately by a group called Independence Power Partners. IPP is a joint project between United Energy Trading, a large North American crude oil and natural gas company, and Exigent Energy, a national energy management company.
UET started working with the city of Independence in 2024 on the permitting process to reopen the Blue Valley Power Plant. Exigent Energy came on board the following year, around the time the city started negotiating with Nebius over energy services.
Independence Power and Light is one of the three largest municipal utility providers in Missouri, and within the top 5% of providers in the nation by size.
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