The Western United States is home to some of the fastest-growing markets for data centers, the air-cooled facilities that hold stacks of computers that power the online world — and require immense amounts of electricity and ever-stronger cooling equipment to prevent overheating.

Here comes the sun, along with hundreds of sheep, to the rescue.

At a 4,700-acre sheep ranching business in central Wyoming, a joint venture between two privately owned commercial real estate developers is seeking state approval to construct a 499-megawatt solar farm, enough capacity to power about 150,000 households. The land is now occupied by a large flock of sheep, but the wool-covered animals won't be moved from their home. They will continue to graze there, even under the solar panels.

The combination of privately operated solar farms with animal ranch land is a small but growing niche in the renewable energy industry. Commercial real estate developers such as BrightNight, based in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Toronto-based Cordelio Power seek to take advantage of the growing demand for power. The rise of artificial intelligence and the expansion of data centers to handle the greater energy needs is further driving demand for power, especially from sustainable sources like solar.

Solar power continues to rise in importance as a sustainable replacement for fossil fuels. Total installed U.S. solar capacity is expected to increase from 142 gigawatts in 2022 to 377 gigawatts by the end of 2028, according to a December report from the Solar Energy Industries Association. That is enough capacity to power about 65 million houses.

Ranchers who have installed solar panels say sheep don't mind the equipment, with the American Lamb Board, an organization that represents farmers, noting the panels shelter the animals from heat, wind and rain. The grazing in turn prevents vegetation from growing around the equipment and reducing the performance of the panels. 

"Sheep are small and nimble," the American Solar Grazing Association, a trade group for ranchers that have installed solar panels, said on its website. "They can eat vegetation no matter the height of the panels."

Some local officials in Wyoming welcome the economic development.

"We're excited," Jim Willox, commission chairman in Converse County, told CoStar News. "We've got a dozen wind farms in the county and this will be our first solar farm."

Businesses, schools and the hundreds of millions of people who live in the Western U.S. need the energy, with analysts saying data centers are poised to gobble up an increasing portion of the power supply.

Because Wyoming is located in the territory of the Western Interconnection electrical grid, solar power generated in Wyoming fuels customers in Utah, Nevada, Oregon and other Western states. As it happens, Salt Lake City is the fastest-growing U.S. market for data center capacity under construction in a direct response to meeting demand from data center users, according to JLL's recent North American Data Center report.

The planned solar farm would be located near Glenrock, Wyoming, on a ranch operated by Tim Tillard & Sons LLC, according to a permit application. The development company is a joint venture between BrightNight and Cordelio.

The joint venture obtained approval in February from the Converse County Board of Commissioners. The venture must still obtain approval from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Industrial Siting Council. Some residents attended a recent commission meeting to voice opposition to the project, saying the solar panels and transmission lines could create the risk of radiation exposure and could negatively affect prairie dogs' migration patterns, according to local media reports.

Solar energy is one of the most active areas of commercial development for the electric utilities sector. Solar panel makers and suppliers, including First Solar, Trina Solar, Qcells and Solarcycle, are developing new factories across the U.S. The Copper Mountain Solar Facility south of Las Vegas, partly owned by publicly traded energy utility Consolidated Edison, is one of the largest commercial solar farms in the country. More large solar farms are under construction or in the planning stages in California, Ohio and Texas.

Commercial property developers like Crow Holdings are adding solar panels to the roofs of warehouses and other industrial buildings to generate sustainable energy for their operations.

Solar farms — rows of solar panels set on metal structures at an angle to best capture the sun's rays — are popping up as part of the push to use renewable sources of electric power. Federal incentives are available to consumers to install solar panels as the U.S. and other countries have pledged to eliminate most carbon emissions by 2050 as part of the Paris Agreement.

BrightNight has at least two additional projects under development in Kentucky and Washington state that combine solar panels and sheep grazing.

At the BrightNight project in Wyoming, sheep will be able to freely roam on the same property where they currently graze along with the addition of places where solar panels are installed.

“Sheep grazing maintains productive land and reduces vegetation management costs,” BrightNight said in a statement on its website. “Also, sheep are solar-friendly; in fact, they enjoy the shade from our solar panels.”

A BrightNight spokeswoman declined to comment or provide additional details to CoStar News.

Willox, the local county commission chairman, said he supports the project because it will allow the land to continue to be used for agriculture.

"They've done sheep ranching on that property for 100 years," Willox told CoStar News.

The BrightNight project is expected to cover about 4,700 acres about 25 miles east of Casper, Wyoming. The operation is designed to include battery storage and connect to transmission lines owned and operated by PacifiCorp, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, that serves the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Northwest regions.

The Wyoming solar farm’s projected 499-megawatt capacity is comparable to other solar power developments. Nevada's Copper Mountain Solar Facility, considered the largest U.S. solar farm, has a capacity of 802 megawatts. The Springbok Solar Farm near Bakersfield, California, has a capacity of 443 megawatts.