in early november, microsoft announced that it was making its cheyenne, wyoming data center fully powered by wind, following the purchase of 237 megawatts of wind energy from bloom wind project in kansas and black hills energy in wyoming. microsoft also announced that it was making the center’s backup generator available to the local grid to keep prices low for all ratepayers.

microsoft has tapped into local wind farms to make the cheyenne data center run entirely on wind power.
(wikimedia commons)

this is part of the company’s commitment to have its data centers be running off 50 percent renewable energy by 2018 and as much as 60 percent by early next decade. this commitment to renewable energy has been matched by other companies, such as apple, and is part of the company’s support of re100, a global collaboration of businesses committed to 100 percent renewable electricity.

microsoft adds the wyoming data center to its remington solar project in virginia, keechi wind in texas, and pilot hill wind in illinois. it has now purchased more than 500 megawatts of wind energy across the country.

the backup generators will be used by black hills energy as a secondary resource for the grid. the generators run off natural gas turbines and will avoid the utility company having to build a new plant.

“this is a small step toward a future where other customer-sited resources may help make the grid more efficient, reliable and capable of integrating intermittent energy sources like wind and solar,” said microsoft president bard smith in a statement.

as noted in an article on network world, the cheyenne data center was a little bit of a surprise at first for the state government, but microsoft has now invested more than $750 million there. in addition to serving the western part of the country, wyoming is the fourth coolest state, which lowers costs on cooling, and it has the lowest electricity prices in the u.s.