Canadian energy firm Enbridge Inc.’s proposed $1.2 billion solar farm development in South Cheyenne has encountered delays with Laramie County officials over a dispute over who is to pay for a county-maintained road needed for the project that will power nearby social media giant Meta Platforms Inc.’s enterprise data center.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is largely backed by co-founder billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
Gunnar Malm, vice chairman of the Laramie County Board of Commissioners, said that the county recently hit a rough patch with Enbridge over the road widening and resurfacing project needed for increased traffic along an 8-mile stretch of Chalk Bluff Road, where Wyoming’s largest utility-scale solar farm would be built.
Malm estimated that Enbridge would need to pay up to $15 million over a 7-mile corridor of the narrow county road that runs east off South Greeley Highway and another mile of a gravel road that runs north along the eastern edge of the proposed solar farm project.
“We’re still working through safety concerns with roads and access roads for fire safety,” Malm said. “The main road (Chalk Bluff) isn’t wide enough to accommodate the traffic, and the developer is supposed to bring the road up to county standards.”
The county had imposed several conditions on Enbridge before it would grant approval for the solar farm project, including building fire access roads from the east and west of the solar farm, and providing fire safety equipment for the lithium battery energy storage systems.
The industrial siting council of Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality issued key permits to Enbridge on May 21 to move forward with the project. However, the county’s planning commission and board of commissioners must still take up the proposal before Enbridge can begin construction.
Malm said the proposal is about 45 days away from getting placed on the agenda for consideration by the board of commissioners.
An Enbridge spokesman was not immediately available for comment on this latest development.
The 771-megawatt solar farm will be built on private land leases in two phases south of Cheyenne, about 4 miles southeast of the capital city. The solar power facility will generate enough electricity to light up more than 771,000 homes, more than in all of Wyoming.
However, power for the project has been designated for the super-sized, energy-starved data centers that software giant Microsoft Corp., Meta and other big data centers in the area are building in the South Cheyenne area.
Not Wanted
Enbridge officials met privately on May 29 with Laramie County Planning and Development, Public Works, Fire District No. 1 and others to discuss the dispute over the road widening project.
The project area, totaling 3,845 acres that will hold 1.2 million solar panels, is located east of U.S. Highway 85, or South Greeley Highway, and both north and south of Chalk Bluff Road and County Road 203.
The project has been split into two construction phases over a 29-month period.
Construction on Cowboy Solar 1 is expected to begin in March 2025, with commercial operation commencing in January 2027. Commercial operation of Cowboy Solar II is expected to begin in August 2027.
Enbridge estimates that the onsite workforce will have a monthly average of 285 temporary workers, with a peak workforce of 375 workers in April 2025.
“Enbridge doesn’t want to do this because that'll slow down the project, and they don’t want to spend money,” said cattle rancher Ed Prosser, who will be affected by 300-400 additional vehicles and trucks that travel over the road in front of his ranching operation.
“My neighbors don’t want this,” Prosser told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.
Prosser owns more than 2,800 acres of grassland along Chalk Bluff that will be surrounded by the solar farm — an eyesore for Prosser along 4 miles of the northern fence of his spread and 2 miles along the eastern edge.
“Unfortunately, people think this is a done deal and that they have all of the permits and can begin construction next year,” Prosser told Cowboy State Daily. “At the moment, this is not true.”
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
