Aircraft launch Boom Supersonic said on Tuesday that it will start selling a version of its turbine engine as a stationary power plant, and that its first customer will be data center startup Crusoe.
Crusoe will buy 29 of Boom’s 42 megawatt turbines for $1.25 billion to generate 1.21 gigawatts for its data centers. Boom said it would announce more details of a turbine plant next year, with first deliveries due in 2027.
To commercialize the Superpower stationary turbine, Boom has raised $300 million in a round led by Darsana Capital Partners with participation from Altimeter Capital, Ark Invest, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures and Y Combinator.
Profits from the sale of Superpower units will go toward funding the continued development of the company’s Overture supersonic aircraft, Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl told TechCrunch.
It’s an arrangement that Scholl likens to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. Satellite internet service is allegedly profitablehelping the company finance its rocket development.
“I’ve had my eyes open for 10 years for what our Starlink could be,” he said. “I’ve said no to a thousand things because I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re a distraction. The one we say yes to because it’s so clear on the street.”
Boom said Superpower and its aero engine called Symphony share 80% of their components. Earlier this year, Boom’s XB-1 demonstrator was the first civilian aircraft developed by a private company to break the sound barrier.
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Crusos pays $1,033 per kilowatt of capacity. For this, Boom will deliver the turbines, generators, control systems and preventive maintenance. Crusos should provide everything else, including pollution controls, electrical connections, and so on.
This is on the higher side for this type of power plant. A standard airplane — or wind-powered — turbine costs about $1,600 per kilowatt, a price that also includes pollution controls, engineering, construction, land acquisition, permitting, pipelines and more.
In a typical project, the turbine and pollution controls contribute about 46% of the total cost of a project. Applying that rate to Boom’s figures would likely push the total cost to over $2,000 per kilowatt. This is expensive for a simple cycle gas turbine and more in a row with costs for combined cycle gas turbines expected to enter the market in the early 2030s.
Boom’s Superpower targets 39% efficiency, similar to competitors. Combined cycle turbines can recover heat from the exhaust to increase efficiency by over 60%.
Boom is also developing a “field upgrade” to convert its turbines from simple cycle to combined cycle, Scholl said. Operators could do this today using existing combined cycle kits, although adding them would require longer installation times. “These combined cycle units tend to be construction projects,” he said.
Like other aero-turbine generators, Superpower will be delivered in a shipping container and developers like Crusoe will be responsible for electricity and gas connections in addition to pollution control.
Scholl said the power plants should be “no louder” than existing wind turbines, though that’s not exactly quiet: Residents near the xAI Colossus data center report hearing similar-sized turbines from at least half a mile away.
The first stationary turbines will be built at Boom’s existing facilities while the company builds a larger plant. The goal is to produce 1 gigawatt worth in 2028, 2 gigawatts worth in 2029 and 4 gigawatts worth in 2030. If Boom can achieve these numbers, it will represent significant expansion on the turbines available for deployment.
Boom still has a few tough years ahead of her. If the company can pull it off, supersonic commercial flights could happen sooner than Boom expects. But scaling production is never easy, and many startups have struggled to cross the valley of death that separates early-stage hardware companies from their commercial peers.
