The investment, July 2 -- The company that operates Britain's high-voltage transmission lines announced Tuesday it would invest $1.75 billion into a Houston startup building a gas-fired power plant in West Texas - not because National Grid needs more power in Texas, but because Microsoft does.

electricity flows from turbine to server rack without ever touching the wider network. For Microsoft, which has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement for the project's full output, that means guaranteed baseload power on a timeline the utility grid cannot match.

The project, known as Project Kilby, is a 2.67-gigawatt plant planned for West Texas. It is being developed as a 50/50 joint venture between Joulent and Chevron Corporation - specifica...