The artificial intelligence “revolution,” which is already reshaping business, culture and economies worldwide, comes with high electricity needs, creating numerous potential opportunities and pitfalls for Wyoming – a powerhouse.
That was the theme of a recent discussion at a Cheyenne legislative committee. But so far, lawmakers are unsure how the state could navigate the waters beyond the course it has set in an already challenging electricity market.
Is the unprecedented demand for electricity an opportunity to extend the life of aging facilities that burn Wyoming coal? Will it ignite a nuclear power generation industry and revive uranium mining in Wyoming after a few years this time, or will it erect a sea of wind turbines across the landscape? And what could this mean for electricity rates that are already skyrocketing?
Although the Committee on Business, Elections and Political Subdivisions had considered one bill related to these issues – a measure to give utilities more negotiating power when contracting with data center customers – members declined to advance the proposal as a whole. Instead, the panel agreed to continue exploring the vast, complex nature of what artificial intelligence calculations could have in store for the state.
‘Huge’ question
Regardless of where data centers are built in the western United States, Wyoming will likely be called upon to help fuel rising energy demand. According to federal data, Wyoming exports more than 60% of the nation’s electricity to consumers in other states, and that role is likely to continue, whether through coal, wind, nuclear or other energy sources.
Data centers, which essentially store rows of computer servers, require a lot of electricity. Although the industry is making strides toward greater energy efficiency, it is estimated that growing demand for this service will double the electrical energy needed by the industry by 2030, which will account for nearly 4% of global electricity demand according to Goldman Sachs .
Closer to home, PacifiCorp — which serves six Western states and operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming — has received requests from data computing companies to add more than 7,000 megawatts of new, yet-to-be-built power generation, officials say. That’s equivalent to adding another state to its system.
“These are huge [electrical] a lot… and they want to get online super fast – in three, five years,” Rocky Mountain Power Government Affairs Director Thom Carter testified. The artificial intelligence computing industry has become “a bit of an arms race,” Carter added. “Who will build the biggest brain the fastest?”
For decades, PacifiCorp and Rocky Mountain Power have successfully planned for incremental demand growth of about 2% to 3%, Carter said. To meet the expected demand for potential data computing customers, that pace would need to more than double.
The prospect is also top-of-mind for some city officials, especially in Cheyenne.
Of the 11 data centers already operating in the state, eight are in and around Wyoming’s capital, according to DataCenterMap, taking advantage of the region’s access to high-bandwidth fiber. While some of these facilities rely on wholesale power purchases that don’t necessarily come from power plants in Wyoming, Cheyenne officials routinely hear from data and generation developers who would like more power generation here.
“We have a lot of demands for electricity,” Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins told the committee. “We are going from 350 megawatts [of power demand] up to, who knows, a thousand or more in the next five years.”
Collins credits electricity provider Black Hills Energy, as well as the state, for creating agreements with high-load data centers that allow for a kind of one-for-one arrangement to avoid shifting costs to regular ratepayers like small businesses and homeowners . Many of the centers rely on electricity that Black Hills Power purchases from the multi-state wholesale market.
But, Collins told WyoFile, the prospect of much greater electricity demand in the region is real, and the benefits of hosting data centers are worth figuring out how this can work for Wyoming communities.
“These are good companies that are making huge – I mean billion-dollar investments in our community – and they’re providing really good, quality jobs,” Collins said. “I’m happy with what’s happening.”
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