Human waste, with a little help from Microsoft, will power a new data facility in Cheyenne by March.
The Wyoming Business Council and the State Loan and Investment Board approved a $1.5 million Community Readiness grant to build a data center and power plant that runs off of biogas methane—or in other words—human waste. Construction on the “dataplant” at the Dry Creek Water Reclamation Facility will begin in January.
An open field next to the Cheyenne city’s water reclamation facility will be the home of the new plant, said Anja Bendel, director of Cheyenne LEADS, a non-profit economic development corporation for the Cheyenne area.
The new plant will consist of a fuel cell that houses the methane biogas and a trailer filled with Microsoft servers, Bendel said. The energy produced by the fuel cell will power the servers.
“Since I’ve been at Microsoft for the last year or so I’ve really been focused on developing strategic partnerships across the industry to work with entities like the Western Research Institute and also find government agencies like Cheyenne LEADS and the Wyoming Business Council that can help bring these projects to fruition,” said Brian Janous, data center facility architect for Microsoft, in a release. “It’s been really refreshing, here in Wyoming, to find a group of people who are enthusiastic about these issues and are willing to develop a project that finds that particular alignment of interests that makes something like this work.”