Google on Thursday, 5 November, announced its first data centre in Wyoming, a long-term investment of $17 billion in Laramie County, near the state capital, Cheyenne. It is building the campus with four partners: Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power (AEP) and Related Digital.
The announcement came with a promise aimed at the growing anger over data centres in the United States. "We will pay for 100% of the power we use," Google wrote, adding that it will also cover the infrastructure needs "directly driven by our growth". It landed a day after US voters turned against AI data centres in several midterm contests, and on a day when the Nasdaq fell about 5% in early afternoon trading as investors questioned AI spending, according to TheEnergyMag.
Fuel cells and carbon capture
The campus will draw part of its power from a 702 MW fuel-cell plant contracted with AEP. The fuel cells, made in the US by Bloom Energy, turn natural gas into electricity through a chemical reaction rather than burning it, and most of the plant's carbon emissions are to be captured and stored underground at a Tallgrass site nearby. Google calls it "the largest planned development of its kind to date" and says the deal takes its contracted carbon-capture capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt.
TheEnergyMag reports that AEP first disclosed the fuel-cell project on 14 October, with about $4 billion of planned investment, construction from 2026 and full operation targeted by the end of 2028. Google did not disclose what share of emissions will be captured.
More power will come from gas generators run by Tallgrass and Black Hills. In October Black Hills announced about $1.8 billion for 564 MW of new gas generation, up to 590 MW of grid service and the management of about 2.1 GW of third-party resources through a private microgrid, according to TheEnergyMag. Black Hills says its contracts keep existing customers from paying for the build. Google is also studying whether carbon capture can be fitted to Tallgrass's gas turbines.
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The data centre will be air-cooled to limit pressure on local water, Google says. The company says it met more than 200 Laramie County residents at a meeting in Cheyenne and expects the project to generate "hundreds of millions of dollars" in property taxes for the county and its school district, without giving a period. Google and its partners, with Bloom Energy, are also setting up a Community Council to deal with the strain of data-centre growth on Cheyenne.
