Cheyenne to host massive AI data center using more electricity than all Wyoming homes combined

Cheyenne, Wyo. – An artificial intelligence data center that would use more electricity than each house in the Wyoming combined before developing up to five times this size will soon be built near Cheyenne, according to the city mayor.

“It’s a game changer. It’s huge,” said Mayor Patrick Collins on Monday.

With fresh weather – good to maintain computer temperatures – and an abundance of cheap electricity from a high -level energy production state, the Wyoming capital has become a hub of the computing power.

The city has housed Microsoft data centers since 2012. A database of $ 800 million announced last year by Facebook Meta Platforms parent company is being completed, said Collins.

The latest data center, a joint effort between the Regional Energy Infrastructure Company Tallgrass and the developer of the Crusoe data center, would start at 1.8 gigawatts of electricity and would be evolving at 10 gigawatts, according to a joint declaration from the company.

A gigawatt can supply up to 1 million houses. But it’s more houses that Wyoming has people. The least populated state, Wyoming has around 590,000 people.

And he is a large energy exporter. According to the US Energo and Pennsylvania, one of the main producers of coal, oil and gas, Wyoming behind Texas, New Mexico and Pennsylvania as a net of net energy production.

Accounting of fossil fuels, Wyoming produces about 12 times more energy than it consumes. The state exports almost three fifths of the electricity it produces, according to EIA.

But this proposed data center is so large that it would have its own energy dedicated to the production of gas and renewable sources, according to Collins and the managers of the company.

Governor Mark Gordon praised the value of the project to the state gas industry.

“This is an exciting news for Wyoming and for Wyoming natural gas producers,” Gordon said in the press release.

Although data centers are hungry for energy, experts say that companies can help reduce their climate effect by feeding them with renewable energies rather than fossil fuels. Despite this, electricity customers may see their invoices increase as public services plan for massive data projects on the network.

The data center would be built several kilometers (kilometers) south of Cheyenne off US 85 near the Colorado state line. State regulators and premises should sign on the project, but Collins was optimistic, construction could start soon.

“I think their plans are to go as soon as possible,” said Collins.

OPENAI, the Chat GPT developer, has traveled the United States for a massive effort from the AI data center called Stargate, but a crusoe spokesman refused to say if the Cheyenne project was one.

“We are not at a stadium that we are ready to announce our tenant there,” said spokesperson Andrew Schmitt. “I cannot confirm or deny that it will be one of the stargate.”

Recently, Openai announced that it had lit the first phase of a complex of data centers built by Crusoe in Abilene, Texas, in partnership with the Oracle software giant.

“To our knowledge, it is the largest data center – we consider it a campus – in the world,” said World Affairs of Openai, Chris Lehane last week. “It generates, roughly and according to the way you count, about an energy gigawatt.”

Openai also looked elsewhere in the United States to extend its data centers. He said last week that he had entered into an agreement with Oracle to develop 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity.

“We are now in a position where we have, in a truly concrete way, identified more than five energy gigawatts that we will be able to build,” said Lehane.

OpenAI has not appointed any place, in addition to its flagship site in Texas, where it plans to build data centers.

Earlier this year, Wyoming was not one of the 16 states in which Openai said it was looking for locations to build new data centers.

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O’Brien reported to Austin, Texas.