A low-water-use data center being developed in Evanston, Wyoming, by Prometheus Hyperscale is expanding to Texas. The data center in Evanston is still moving ahead as planned and will remain the company\u2019s flagship.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
By Ren\u00e9e Jean<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wyoming is still the flagship for a water-efficient data center under development in Evanston, even though the company building it has recently inked a deal to build more of its innovative data centers along Interstate 35 in Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prometheus Hyperscale will be collaborating with independent power producer ENGIE, which, according to ENGIE\u2019s website, has a combined generating capacity of 115.3 gigawatts with another 10.5 gigawatts on the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That makes the company the world\u2019s largest independent power producer (IPP), according to Prometheus Hyperscale\u2019s founder and sixth-generation Wyomingite, Trenton Thornock. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo give you some idea on scale, the state of Wyoming on a peak day, uses about 1 gigawatt, including the data centers that are already there,\u201d he said. \u201cSo ENGIE\u2019s much larger than our IPP partner that we have in Wyoming, which is a U.S. company.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prometheus builds liquid-cooled data centers that rely on proprietary geothermal technology to enable zero water use, Thornock said, while ENGIE brings a powerhouse of renewables and battery storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese are investments that ENGIE has already made, where they already own the land,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cAnd, in most cases, they have an operating facility that\u2019s got a grid connection, which is really hard to otherwise come by (in Texas).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The waiting list to connect to the power grid in Texas is about five years long in most places right now, Thornock said, but by teaming up with ENGIE, Prometheus can skip ahead and start building out their data centers as soon as they have a tenant lined up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are a lot of tenants who are looking for power by the end of 2026,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cOur deal with ENGIE allows us to deliver on that. Kind of the soonest we can get power built in Wyoming is around 2027, and a lot the hyperscalers are not buying for 2027, 2028, or 2029, which is when all that capacity would come online.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The deal, in many ways, speaks to the congestion that\u2019s happening right now. Everyone wants more power right now, and they want it yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe entire U.S. grid is becoming congested in part because we\u2019re bringing manufacturing back to the United States,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cIt was going overseas for the last 25 years. And, at the same time, you\u2019ve got new data centers coming online for AI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s in addition to all the new cloud computing centers that are also still needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven though it doesn\u2019t make it into the news headlines, cloud is still growing,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cAnd a lot of the co-location of data centers are still providing new capacity for companies that need more cloud capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Texas deal doesn\u2019t change Thornock\u2019s goals in the Cowboy State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s very opportunistic,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cBut we\u2019re still focused on our flagship, which is in Uinta County, Wyoming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interest in the Evanston, Wyoming data center has been spiking, Thornock said, and he\u2019s already had two prospective tenants ask for letters of intent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWyoming is moving,\u201d he said. \u201cThe key to Wyoming is how fast can we get natural gas laterals from the existing pipeline infrastructure in the area to the place where we\u2019re going to create the power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Negotiations to bring tenants to data centers have been long and time-consuming, Thornock added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of our counterparties, we\u2019ve been negotiating with for an entire year now,\u201d he said. \u201c(But) we can\u2019t start until we have a tenant contract in hand. That enables us to get financing to go build because nobody, nobody can build this stuff on spec. Like even the minimum build in Wyoming is about a $1.4 billion spend, so even large companies don\u2019t build these on speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thornock is headed to New York this week to meet with institutional investors about both his projects in Texas and Wyoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cENGIE has given us access to a handful of sites \u2014 six to be precise \u2014 and we\u2019re in the process of figuring out kind of the best ones, and then we\u2019ll take those to market,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cBecause the Texas data center market is so hot, we think we\u2019ll get contracts fairly quickly and that those will get off and running.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which site will get built first is a toss-up right now, Thornock said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Texas sites obviously already have power and a grid interconnection so they are ahead in that respect,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re further along in the negotiations for Wyoming, because we haven\u2019t even taken the Texas sites to market yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thornock\u2019s family has been ranching in the southwest Wyoming area for a collective 156 years now. That was the motivation for taking a different approach to the data center he plans to build in Wyoming, as well as, eventually, across the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given his background in ranching, the last thing Thornock and his family wanted or needed is a water hog in their backyard. So, in his mind, it was imperative that he build something that\u2019s compatible with their ongoing agricultural interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re a ranching family,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cWe want to stay away from that. And we want reliable (power) generation, so the generation we\u2019re going to build will be primarily natural gas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a possibility that the new data center may include some wind and batteries in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s an option. We\u2019re not banking on that,\u201d Thornock said. \u201cWe\u2019re banking on using Wyoming gas \u2014 clean stuff \u2014 and using that as what we call our base load power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, when Thornock was developing his ideas for a data center that would be liquid-cooled but not a water hog, investors told him he was crazy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Oh well, good luck with that,\u2019\u201d Thornock recalled. \u201c\u2018Nobody needs that kind of infrastructure.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That struck a little fear in Thornock\u2019s heart at first. He\u2019s had a long and successful career in the financial sector and is all too familiar with the private equity joke that being early is the same as being wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the minute AI hit the horizon, the joke was on everyone else. Now everyone needs a better idea for cooling these hyper-intense, energy-guzzling computing centers where a chip the size of one\u2019s thumb can generate as much heat as a microwave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s put his water-efficient data center model on the leading edge of what he sees as \u201cinsatiable demand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve talked to tenants, we\u2019ve talked to AI companies, we\u2019ve talked to some of our competitors, and nobody can build fast enough right now,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of business out there for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Thornock\u2019s biggest hopes for the data center he\u2019s chosen to build in Wyoming, even though it might have been faster to build them elsewhere, is that it will create new opportunities for Wyoming graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thornock is well aware of Wyoming\u2019s brain-drain crisis, where 60% of its graduates leave the state by age 30, many never to return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m in touch with a lot of people who grew up in the Evanston area,\u201d he said. And in most cases, they had to leave. Like, there\u2019s limited economic opportunity for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wyoming\u2019s youth outmigration is among highest in the country, Wyoming Business Council Executive Director Josh Dorrell has told Cowboy State Daily in previous interviews, and it\u2019s a contributing factor in the state\u2019s steadily declining GDP, which has been on a downward trend since 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had some ups and downs, as we usually do but the overall trend is down,\u201d Dorrell said. \u201cAnd then our median wage, again, went down. So, the thing that we haven\u2019t been able to do yet is really kind of focus on that knowledge sector and really go after those firms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thornock hopes his facility will be part of the change he\u2019d like to see in Wyoming, providing economic opportunities to those who might otherwise leave the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Economic analysis of the data center in Evanston, which was performed by University of Wyoming, shows a $3.1 billion economic impact for operation of the data center, looking out to 2032, for Thornock\u2019s project in Uinta County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Employment wise, the center would have 600 direct employees in 2032, according to the UW analysis. That would make it Uinta County\u2019s largest employer, according to Uinta County Economic Developer Gary Welling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Uinta has lately been drawing the interest of other data centers, Welling added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t know why southwest Wyoming is starting to get hit with data centers, whether that\u2019s because of Trenton or because of other things going around,\u201d Welling said. \u201cBut I suspect they\u2019re just looking for that redundancy in different areas, so that they don\u2019t have any downtime, which is detrimental to the cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple interesting points in this article, is that there is a way of building these data centers without using evaporative water cooling which wastes such a precious resource. And the other point is that with manufacturing returning to the US, there are significant lead times on getting electrical hookups for new facilities. Beyond the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-wyoming"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13609,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions\/13609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Prometheus](\"https:\/\/cowboystatedaily.imgix.net\/Prometheus-hyperscale_trenton_pointing7217.jpg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&q=75&auto=format%2Ccompress\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n Evanston Nearing A Deal<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Insatiable Demand<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Reversing Brain Drain<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n