Google commits $17 billion to Wyoming data center campus

Google committed $17 billion to Wyoming and named Cheyenne as the home of its first data center in the state, powered in part by 702 MW of fuel cells with carbon capture.

American Electric Power signed a power purchase agreement for the 702 MW fuel-cell project last month, and Bloom Energy will supply the solid oxide fuel cells, which AEP will own and operate. The campus will also offtake power from gas generators run by Tallgrass Energy and Black Hills Energy, and CO2 captured at the fuel cells will be sequestered at Tallgrass's nearby Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub.

Google has committed to pay for all the power the campus uses, giving lenders a contracted revenue stream to underwrite against the fuel cells AEP will own and operate and Tallgrass's sequestration hub.

Google is running a technical front-end engineering and design study on fitting carbon capture to Tallgrass's combined-cycle turbines. If that moves to hardware, capture would extend beyond the 702 MW fuel-cell array to the gas plants serving the rest of the site. CRC and Bloom Energy are weighing 1 GW of fuel cells paired with CCS that would capture up to three million metric tons of CO2 a year, as Private Wealth Daily reported on Nov. 3.

Earlier reporting suggested the site could total 2.7 GW. The 702 MW fuel-cell project would cover about a quarter of that load, with the rest from Tallgrass and Black Hills gas generators. Google has not disclosed a capacity figure.

The site is a 716-acre parcel eight miles south of Cheyenne in the Switchgrass Industrial Park, and the project application points to four data halls plus an office hub, logistics and network buildings. Steve Walter, Google's vice president for global infrastructure and energy, said the campus will use an air-cooled system to "minimize strain on local water resources."

The Wyoming commitment is larger than the $15 billion Google has committed to Malaysian data centers through 2028, as Private Wealth Daily reported this week.

Google was identified as the company behind the campus in July. The site was previously Project Jade, which Crusoe was developing as a 1.8 GW campus that could scale to 10 GW; in June, Crusoe said it had paused work "at the request of our customer." Local reports at the time said Google subsidiary Jupiter Star Holdings, LLC had taken over development from Crusoe.

Construction is slated for completion by 2031.