Enbridge and Meta are expanding their clean energy partnership with a solar and storage project in Wyoming, which will supply Meta data centers with 365 MW of solar and a 200 MW/1,600 MWh battery energy storage system, Enbridge said in a Tuesday release.
Including this project, the two companies have partnered to develop 1.6 GW of solar, wind and storage capacity, Enbridge said. The Wyoming project will be located near Cheyenne and is the first phase of the companies’ joint Cowboy Project. Tesla will provide the batteries.
The project will deliver power to Meta “through Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power under a large-load tariff designed to serve data centers without affecting retail electricity rates,” Enbridge said. The company expects to invest $1.2 billion into the project’s construction and anticipates that it will enter service by the end of 2027.
The tariff in question is Wyoming’s Large Power Contract Service tariff, Enbridge said. It was developed by Microsoft and Black Hills Energy, which along with Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power is a subsidiary of Black Hills Corp.
The tariff is open to retail customers with a load of over 13 MW and requires “customer-owned, behind-the-meter dispatchable generation onsite for reliability and backup,” according to Black Hills Energy. Under the tariff, the utility can tap this backup generation capacity during periods of high electricity demand.
The tariff “[allows] the utility to provide market and renewable energy options to data centers without impact on retail rates,” Enbridge said. “The BESS capacity is contracted under a long-term, battery tolling agreement with [Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power] under the same LPCS tariff.”
Enbridge and Meta previously partnered to develop three projects in Texas: the 600-MW Clear Fork Solar, the 152-MW Easter Wind and the 300-MW Cone Wind.
“The project will be one of the larger utility-scale battery installations supporting U.S. data center operations and growth,” said Allen Capps, Enbridge’s senior vice president of strategy and president of power, in a LinkedIn post.
