So far, most of Wyoming’s data center announcements have revolved around Cheyenne. The state’s capital has announced a steady stream of data centers the past two years, including an expansion of Microsoft data centers, META’s brand-new facility, and more recently, Related Digital’s 302 megawatt facility for CoreWeave.
But now, a potentially giant data center is coming to the Casper area, announced by Prometheus Hyperscale, in partnership with Spiritus and Casper Carbon Capture.
The data center will start with a minimum $500 million investment for an initial 200 megawatts, but could scale up to $1.5 gigawatts in all, with up to 600 employees and overall economic impact of up to $3.1 billion, based on an economic impact study commissioned by Prometheus Hyperscale for a similar center it’s building in Evanston.
The project will actually straddle both Natrona and Converse counties, giving both counties an economic boost, according to Prometheus founder and CEO Trenton Thornock.
“We signed this deal on Friday,” Thornock told Cowboy State Daily. “We kind of know where we want it to be, but we’ve got to go in and do the geotechnical (study). We did an initial study to make sure we’re not impacting any endangered species or what have you and have done a red flag report, but we still need to get in on this specific parcel that we’re going to be dealing with and understand it really well.”
Why Doesn’t Casper Already Have One?
Justin Farley, CEO of Advance Casper, told Cowboy State Daily the reason it hasn’t had more data centers locating in Casper is related to energy.
“The simple answer to why Natrona County does not have large-scale data centers is due to our utility provider, Rocky Mountain Power,” he said in an email to Cowboy State Daily. “We have small locally owned and operated centers.”
It’s not the first time that communities have mentioned issues with Rocky Mountain Power when explaining why their communities haven’t collared more data centers, particularly along the I-80 corridor, which has a major fiber optic cable following it. Because of that, I-80 has attracted clusters of large data centers all along it in every other state. But that trend noticeably falls off once past Cheyenne, Wyoming, and doesn’t resume again until Utah.
Many of the communities along I-80 just don’t have the infrastructure they would need to bring power to data centers without an expensive build out, according to Wendy Lopez with the Wyoming Business Council.
“If you look at any of the communities along I-80 and how much power they’re currently using, it might only be like 20, 50 megawatts worth of power,” she said in a June interview with Cowboy State Daily. “So, their infrastructure is built for that. The wires that are coming in are built for that.
“If you had a project requesting a load of 250 megawatts, that’s going to require all brand-new infrastructure. That’s metal poles compared to wooden poles.”
Sweetwater County Economic Development Specialist Kayla McDonald told Cowboy State Daily that several companies were interested in Sweetwater, but there were “challenges with electrical capacity from our provider (Rocky Mountain Power.)”
Rocky Mountain Power has declined to speak with Cowboy State Daily about the issues it faces in building out power for data centers, but Rocky Mountain Power Vice President of Government Affairs Tom Carter testified to Wyoming lawmakers in May that it had more than 10 gigawatts of requests for service that all want power in the next three to five years.
“To put that in perspective, our service territory load in Wyoming is just under 1 gigawatt, and it took us 100 years to get there,” Carter said then. “So, we’re being asked to add 10 new states in a matter of three to five years.”
Self-Powered Design
The Casper project will avoid that difficulty by building out its very own power system.
“We’re going to tap an existing natural gas pipeline and run that through what’s called a fuel cell to generate power,” Thornock said. “So, this is something that’s taken off in California, because they’re very power constrained out there.”
It’s typically a more expensive approach, Thornock acknowledged, but it makes sense in this power-constrained environment, where there is legitimate fear that data centers are going to spike residential electricity rates, and where the waiting lines for connection to the grid have become years long.
“Our plan is to not connect to the local grid,” Thornock said. “We will have zero impact on the local grid or rate payers. We’ll be sitting out there by ourselves in an island.”
The location is part of what makes exploring higher cost power feasible in this case.
“That side of Converse County is in what’s called an Opportunity Zone, which gives us some long-term tax benefits,” Thornock explained.
That will help make the costs of building out that power option comparable to the costs of other power options.
Thornock hasn’t begun the formal permitting process yet with either Natrona or Converse Counties. That won’t begin until Thornock verifies that the site is feasible for the project.
There will also be a formal outreach plan as well, so that stakeholders will have a chance to comment on the plans and provide feedback.
“I have family who live in Casper,” Thornock said. “And I was CFO of Scientific Drilling, which had a base in Casper for decades, so the town is fairly well-known and liked, at least, by me. So we’ll want to make sure that we engage with everyone and be very transparent about what we’re doing, let them be involved in the process.”
Center Will Still Be Carbon Negative
The partnership with Spiritus and Casper Carbon Capture, however, is about more than just development of another data center.
Thornock’s vision is to create a carbon-negative digital infrastructure campus in Wyoming.
Casper Carbon Capture will be providing land, rights of way, and access to permitted carbon dioxide sequestration wells in Natrona and Converse County, to park the data center’s emissions underground.
Thornock said the company was looking for a data center developer and approached him, looking for someone who could handle building out something huge.
“The initial piece will be about 200 megawatts,” Thornock said. “And then, based on the existing infrastructure we can go up to about 380 megawatts. If the pipeline operator puts in a compressor station, we can go to about a gigawatt and a half.”
Thornock said with the facility’s size, he’s aiming for tenants on the order of Wall Street’s “Magnificent Seven.”
Those are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
“That’s what the people here on Wall Street call them,” Thornock said.
Evanston And Texas Projects
The size of the facility Thornock is working on in Casper will be similar in scope to the facility he’s been working on near Evanston in Uinta County, which is still ongoing.
“We’ve been in negotiations with one of the hyperscalers for a year now,” Thornock said. “I mean it takes an exceedingly long time to get through the process with these folks.”
Part of that process is an exchange of site feasibility studies.
“They have to do site fit analysis, and then they want to look at what our build spec looks like against their detailed specifications,” Thornock said. “It takes a lot of engineering resources to make sure everything is squared away before you can move to a letter of intent or some sort of tenant contract, but we’re getting really close in Evanston.”
The Texas project Thornock announced last month, meanwhile, is still in its due diligence phase.
“We have to go through the process of doing geotechnical work, and before we decide we’re going to land at a site and do something there, there’s all kinds of upfront work that has to be done,” Thornock said. “I’ve had five years to do that in Uinta County, so that one’s a lot further along.”
Thornock confirmed he is also working on other data center projects, though he could not yet confirm their locations.
“I do have landowners approach me on a regular basis saying, ‘Hey can you put one of these on my ranch,’” Thornock said. ‘My first question is always where’s the long-haul fiber? If we don’t have that, we don’t have a data center. And the next question is where’s the energy infrastructure? Because if you don’t have power, you can’t have a data center. So, we have to have all the pieces in the right place.”
Keeping It Water Frugal
Thornock’s data centers will all use a water frugal model, though it’s a different approach from the one Related Digital outlines this week in its groundbreaking ceremony for its $1.2 billion project in Cheyenne.
Related Digital will be using air chillers and a closed-loop system that doesn’t use water as its fluid. The CEO of Related Companies, Jeff Blau, said that means the data center’s cooling systems will use less water than the facility’s six bathrooms.
Thornock’s system takes a geothermal approach to cooling. It will pull up non-potable water from far below the drinking water table for cooling its systems, then send that water back where it came from.
“We don’t care if the water is alkaline or salty,” Thornock said. “We can change our heat exchanger design to a titanium plate so that the salt doesn’t eat it. Other than that, it’s all the same to us. Bad water to everyone else is still good water to us.”
