Google plans its first Wyoming data centre with fuel-cell and gas power

Google announced on 5 November 2026 that it will build its first data centre in Wyoming, in Laramie County, as a long-term investment of $17 billion, with Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power (AEP) and Related Digital as partners. Google says it will pay for all the power it uses and for the infrastructure its growth requires.

The largest power element is a 702 MW fuel cell project that Google says is contracted with AEP. Google calls it the biggest such project planned so far and says Bloom Energy will manufacture the fuel cells in the United States. They will run on natural gas, and Google says carbon capture and storage will take most of their carbon emissions for permanent storage underground at the Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub, which Tallgrass runs nearby. With this project, Google says, its contracted carbon capture capacity reaches nearly 1 GW.

AEP described its side of the project on 14 October. It says it plans to invest about $4 billion in the 702 MW facility near Cheyenne, which will sell power to Google under a 20-year power purchase agreement. The owner is Cheyenne Fuel Cell, LLC, roughly 92% held by AEP and almost 8% by funds that Basalt Infrastructure Partners advises. AEP says construction is planned to start in 2026, with the facility fully running by the close of 2028. It adds that Bloom's technology produces electricity without burning the gas, and that the project includes plans for carbon capture.

Black Hills Corp. announced on 6 October that it had signed definitive agreements with Google, effective 30 September 2026 and running through 2048, to supply the planned data centre in Cheyenne. It says the project will draw on 2.7 GW of resources in total, reserve margins included, with energy service beginning in late 2027 and load ramping to its peak in 2030. Black Hills says it will supply as much as 590 MW to the grid and will also manage the output of roughly 2.1 GW from outside generators under contract in Wyoming, through a privately managed microgrid.

To deliver the 590 MW, Black Hills says it plans to spend $1.8 billion over 2027 to 2029 on 564 MW (nameplate) of new gas-fired generation, built and owned by a non-regulated affiliate at its Cheyenne Prairie Generating Station site. The other 26 MW would come from energy bought on the market and from retail service under its industrial tariff. The company says the agreements are set up so that Google bears the costs of serving the data centre and existing customers do not. Google has advanced Black Hills about $399 million, refundable, for long-lead equipment, which Black Hills expects to repay by 30 June 2027.

Black Hills says the certificate for its Robinson substation was approved in May 2026 and the air quality permit for expanding the Cheyenne Prairie station in August 2026, and that it applied in July 2026 for industrial siting approval of that expansion. In its quarterly filing of 5 November, it says its Wyoming utility has asked the state's Public Service Commission for a tariff that would recover transmission costs directly from large-load customers, filed on 19 June with a ruling expected in the first three months of 2027, and for certificates for two transmission projects, worth $686 million together, for this project and other large loads in the region. These are the $80 million South Cheyenne project, filed on 1 September with a ruling expected by mid-2027, and the $606 million Aeolus project, two new 230 kV lines over about 125 miles, filed on 2 November, which the company expects to complete by mid-2029 if approved.

Google adds that it is buying power from gas plants that Tallgrass and Black Hills run and is carrying out a front-end engineering and design study on fitting carbon capture to Tallgrass's combined-cycle turbines. It says the data centre will use air cooling to ease pressure on local water supplies. Google, its partners and Bloom Energy are also forming a Community Council for Cheyenne, after a community meeting at which Google says it met more than 200 residents.