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Wyoming approves a poop for power project

The State Loan and Investment board approved a one point five million dollar community readiness grant to build a power plant that will use human waste to power a Microsoft data center.  

Construction of the Dry Creek Water Reclamation Facility begins in January.  The facility recycles common waste bi-products, creating a stream of biogas methane. This biogas is used as the fuel for a fuel cell. The Fuel Cell converts the biogas into electricity to power the Microsoft data center, which will be located in Cheyenne. 

The Wyoming Business Council says the system is a cost and energy efficient way to power data centers.  Microsoft’s Brian Janous says the company is excited about the project.

 “It opens up opportunities for us to be able to test out new concepts about how we access energy and how we use that energy to power our data centers.  Energy is becoming so critical for us to develop our data centers in the future,  that we need to develop our new technology, we need to find innovative ways to address challenges we have as a company."

Wyoming Business Council C-E-O Bob Jensen called it an exciting project.

“It is another way that Wyoming can show that it’s on the cutting edge of technology, blending energy and digital industry and data center technologies together to try and make a positive step forward for powering data centers in the future.”

Jensen said these types of projects continue to put Wyoming on the technology map.

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