Social media giant Meta Platform Inc. needs Laramie County officials to come to an agreement on future power needs for the massive data enterprise center it plans to build in Wyoming.
Since the largest solar power project in Wyoming was approved by a key state permitting agency last month, developers of the $1.2 billion project have continued to encounter delays with Laramie County officials over who is to pay for road improvements in south Cheyenne.
Canadian energy firm Enbridge Inc. wants to build the project that will eventually supply power to nearby Meta’s enterprise center near the old Intermountain Speedway.
The Meta project is expected to be officially announced to the public next week, although Cowboy State Daily confirmed and reported on the plans in early May.
“The project will have over 1 million square feet and bring billions of dollars in investment to our state,” said Gunnar Malm, vice chairman of the Laramie County Board of Commissioners.
“I think this will bring a diversified economy to Wyoming that promotes growth in our local community,” Malm told Cowboy State Daily. “Anytime you have a company of that scale invest in your state, everyone will benefit.”
The Cheyenne-Laramie County Corporation for Economic Development (LEADS) is inviting media to attend an event at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Event Center on July 2 to announce a “significant new private sector investment in Wyoming.”
LEADS officials declined to comment on the announcement.
Best Kept Secret
The event is to be attended by Cheyenne LEADS CEO Betsey Hale, Wyoming Business Council CEO Josh Dorrell, Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins and officials with the state of Wyoming and Meta.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is largely backed by co-founder billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
Still unresolved, however, is the issue of the massive power demands the data center will have, though Malm said that officials from the county have scheduled a meeting with Enbridge to settle their differences in early July.
“I’m hopeful we’ll come to a resolution with Enbridge,” Malm said.
Cate Cundall, associate planner with Laramie County Planning and Development, said Friday that the planning commission must still approve the Enbridge project once negotiations are completed on the road improvements, which have been drawn out for months.
However, discussions may be “coming to a conclusion,” Cundall told Cowboy State Daily.
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.
The proposal offered by the Alberta-based energy firm, however, designates power from the farm for large industrial corporate customers in Wyoming and not homeowners, according to the application.
Data Center Heaven
The section of south Cheyenne where the solar farm will be built is where super-sized, energy-guzzling data centers like software giant Microsoft Corp., Meta and other big data centers are building in the Cheyenne area.
The project area, totaling 3,845 acres, is located east of U.S. Highway 85 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.
The Industrial Siting Division of Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality approved Enbridge’s application for the permit in May after it was submitted for consideration in mid-January, and a public hearing was held in March.
Enbridge’s only other presence in Wyoming includes the Express-Platte pipeline that transports crude oil from western Canada to refineries in the U.S. Rockies region. The main delivery point of crude through the pipeline is Casper.
When complete, the Enbridge project would become the largest utility-scale solar farm in Wyoming.
Malm previously told Cowboy State Daily that the county 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 the solar farm would be built.
Malm previously said 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.
The dispute over road improvements relates to safety concerns with roads and access for fire safety. 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.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
