Microsoft to harvest Kansas wind for data center

Microsoft on Monday announced that it was committing to buy all 178 megawatts of production from the Bloom Wind wind farm under construction near Dodge City.

It will be part of 237 megawatts of alternative energy the company is buying to supply, through the grid, its Cheyenne, Wyo. data center.

Construction has started on the wind farm, 54 towers spread across 15,000 acres of privately-owned land about 20 miles south of Dodge City in Ford and Clark counties. It will be operational in the third quarter of next year.

Capital Power will operate Bloom Wind and has contracted all of the facility’s output to a subsidiary of Allianz, a large European insurer under a 10-year financial swap contract. Allianz is selling the power to Microsoft for 10 years.

Microsoft is one of a number of large companies buying wind as the price has, in many cases, fallen below conventional generation. Microsoft said that it will generate half of the electricity at its data centers from wind, solar or hydropower by 2018.

This story was originally published November 14, 2016 at 11:20 AM with the headline "Microsoft to harvest Kansas wind for data center."