American Electric Power will invest about $4 billion in a 702 MW fuel cell generation project near Cheyenne, Wyoming, under a 20-year power purchase agreement with Google, the utility announced. The plant is being developed 
Large-scale landscape photo showing an extensive array of Bloom Energy fuel cell servers deployed for mission-critical power.through Cheyenne Fuel Cell, LLC, and is targeted to reach full operation by the end of 2028.
AEP will own and control roughly 92 percent of Cheyenne Fuel Cell, with funds advised by Basalt Infrastructure Partners holding nearly 8 percent. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2026.
The facility will run on solid oxide fuel cells from Bloom Energy. AEP says the units generate electricity without combusting natural gas and that the project will add carbon capture to deliver near-zero-emissions power. That matters for speed as much as for emissions: fuel cells can be built and energized in a fraction of the time a new gas plant or long-distance transmission line requires, which appeals to large loads facing multi-year interconnection queues.
The announcement finalizes an arrangement AEP first flagged in January, when an unregulated subsidiary disclosed an approximately $2.65 billion purchase agreement for Bloom fuel cells paired with a 20-year offtake for an unnamed investment-grade customer.
Google's Cheyenne campus is being served from more than one direction. Black Hills Corp. signed agreements effective Sept. 30 that run through 2048, covering a resource mix of 2.7 GW, including up to 590 MW of grid-connected energy and about 2.1 GW of third-party resources managed through a private microgrid. Black Hills plans to invest $1.8 billion in company-owned generation, with service starting in late 2027 and ramping to peak load in 2030.
"As power demand continues to grow, AEP is bringing together new technologies and strong partnerships to deliver reliable, innovative energy solutions quickly and at scale," said Bill Fehrman, AEP chairman, president and chief executive officer.
Baxtel tracks 23 data center sites in the Cheyenne market, operated by 10 providers and led by Microsoft Azure with nine. The largest is Microsoft's North Range Business Park at 200 MW, and seven sites are under construction. Google's planned campus is tracked at Google: Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Two utilities, two structures, one campus. Cheyenne is turning into a test of how far hyperscalers and their power suppliers will go to put generation next to the load instead of waiting on the grid. AEP building 702 MW of fuel cells well outside its traditional service territory, and attaching carbon capture to make the output easier to defend to regulators, is the part to watch.
If the model holds, utilities gain a new class of large-load customer and data center developers gain a power path that does not depend on the interconnection queue. If capture underperforms or costs run past the $4 billion target, the next project of this shape gets much harder to finance.
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