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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The Belvoir Ranch has long been identified as a potential site of energy developments, and its owner, the City of Cheyenne, appears to be nearing a deal to make another possible. Prospective developer Hanwha Renewables has identified an area on the ranch for a potential solar development and wants to secure an agreement to get the project started.
The Belvoir Ranch is an 18,800-acre property west of town that has slowly been built for recreation, energy development, water storage and more. It fits loosely between the Union Pacific Railroad and Interstate 80, with a portion of the area known as The Big Hole stretching down as far as the Wyoming–Colorado border.
Since the city began planning out the ranch’s future in earnest in 2008, a large chunk of the property’s area has been dedicated to wind energy. A 2024 master plan update reaffirmed the city’s commitment to using large chunks of the land for energy, highlighting solar specifically as a potential use.
Hanwha Renewables, the renewable energy branch of the massive Korean corporation Hanwha, has recently taken action to realize the city’s goals. The company is the same developer as the South Cheyenne Solar Project, a 150-megawatt solar project in south Laramie County that opened in 2024.
Hanwha Renewables representatives have returned to the county, now with their eyes on Belvoir. One employee, associate development manager Tyler Nokelby, said the company is looking to develop a 140-megawatt generation facility and pair it with a 140-megawatt battery energy storage system. Its name is Project Wrangler.
Nokelby came to Cheyenne from California on Sept. 24–25 to pitch the project to Laramie County residents and later the Cheyenne City Council itself, some members of which have spoken with Hanwha before as it scoped out the property.
According to Nokelby, the project is shaping up to be a $300 million investment. As the project’s developer, Hanwha Renewables will take the reigns in the earliest stages of development.
By the time the project nears construction, Hanwha Renewables will sell the asset to a company like Southern Power, which it did for the South Cheyenne Solar Project. The owner will then sell the power generated once the farm is built to an off-taker, Black Hills Energy, which will distribute the energy to commercial, industrial and residential consumers.
Hanwha Renewables’ primary responsibilities include siting, structuring financial agreements to use the property, permitting and site planning. Nokelby said that the company takes those jobs seriously. Months of work go into wildlife and environmental stewardship, which he said the company stressed during South Cheyenne Solar’s development.
“In 2024, we were awarded by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department with the 2023 Industrial Wildlife Stewardship Award and it was because we went above and beyond to reduce environmental impact and facilitate wildlife movement across the landscape,” Nokelby said. “Really what we did was we went far beyond the kind of recommended measures to make sure all sorts of different habitats were mitigated. Specifically pronghorn movement was something we were really concerned about.”
As an example, Nokelby said that if the company contracts an environmental survey and discovers that an incredibly rare species of butterfly lived only in that area, Hanwha would take action to prevent harm to its habitat or would abandon the site. He said Project Wrangler would incorporate fencing to allow small animals to pass through, employ biologists to monitor construction and incorporate new panel types that can follow the contours of hills so that they don’t have to be graded. They have strict decommissioning procedures in place and are even hoping to use the roads that neighboring wind projects have already built to keep natural disturbances to a minimum.
“We did not get into the sustainable energy industry to destroy the environment,” Nokelby said. “These projects are obviously very large and impactful. We do everything we can to mitigate those impacts.”
The prospective site of the Wrangler Energy Park, made up of rolling hills and water-cut gullies, won’t make fulfilling those obligations very easy. While the development should only take up 1,200–1,400 acres of the ranch, the company is hoping to initially secure rights to a 3,300-acre parcel on the ranch’s far-east side to find areas where it can least disturb wildlife, soils and natural waterways, as well as avoid areas too hilly for its panels’ contour-matching design. The whole of the 3,300 acres won’t be used.
“It’s not that the entire area is completely going to be covered and unusable, just maybe a portion of that. In the grand scheme of things, the ranch is 18,000 acres. This is about 3,300,” Nokelby said. “The solar panels are about 1,200 — less than 10%.”
He also stressed that, even if the company did want to keep the remaining land, clauses included in the draft lease strictly prohibit uses not pertaining to solar energy, including data centers.
The development should also avoid disturbing humans. The proposed site is far away from the publicly accessible portions of the ranch, which opened a trail system for biking and trail running in June, and utilizes land around wind turbines that are already there. Unlike those wind turbines, however, the solar project won’t be visible from Interstate 80. It would likely be visible if accessed by Otto Road.
Hanwha said it’s first interested in a four-year option to lease, which grants it the exclusive right to development while it scopes the area out and conducts studies. Even if it chooses to move on from the area, the city would still rake in around $1 million from option fee payments.
If Hanwha does like what it sees and is clear to develop, representatives would structure a long-term operating lease, which starts at 30 years and offers four five-year extension options. That would make the maximum life of the lease 50 years. In that time, just from lease revenue, the City of Cheyenne would generate between $30 million and $60 million, Nokelby said.
“$30 million is probably worst-case scenario. We can’t make any promises right now; we’ll know a lot more as we progress,” Nokelby said. “Great for the city. If you average that out, that’s a little over a million a year, I think.”
Despite being city-owned, the Belvoir Ranch is not in the City of Cheyenne, so Laramie County would be collecting the development’s property taxes. If the City Council decided to annex the area, however, that would mean even more revenue for the city.
Project Wrangler will not spring up overnight. Like the South Cheyenne Solar Project, site planning alone can take years. Nokelby said that, upon the approval of an initial agreement, it would probably take around two or three years to get through site studies, environmental reviews, design and permitting. Groundbreaking would occur around the end of 2027 or in early 2028, and the site would be operational sometime in 2030.
The City of Cheyenne would not have oversight over much of the process after it approves the lease. Permits would come through the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, while site planning approval would come from the Laramie County government.
That means that, unless the city decides to annex the property in the future, the next few weeks will be the primary time for city councilors and Cheyenne residents to publicly speak on the project. Consideration of the lease, which will begin with the four-year option, will be first made Oct. 7. It will be immediately referred to the Finance Committee and will return to the council for a final vote in mid- to late October.
Although the city would only enter the four-year option with Hanwha Renewables if the agreement is approved next month, updating it to enter the full 30-year operational lease would be handled administratively and would not require another public vote.
More about the project from Nokelby or Hanwha Renewables representatives themselves are available in the video recording of the Cheyenne City Council’s Sept. 25 work session on YouTube.
Community Reporter More by Garrett Grochowski
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