A Virginia-based vitality firm plans to construct a pure gas-fired energy plant together with a number of information facilities on some 2,200 acres in that state, based on paperwork filed with native planning authorities. Stories say the facility plant might have as a lot as 3,500 MW of era capability, which might make it the biggest such facility within the state.
Balico LLC, a personal firm based mostly in Herndon, Virginia, has requested for permission to rezone land in Pittsylvania County. The corporate’s utility mentioned it seeks industrial use for the positioning, together with a “campus for information facilities … with non-public energy era.” The campus could be constructed on land that’s at present zoned for residential improvement. County officers plan to assessment the applying at a Nov. 7 assembly. Public conferences in regards to the challenge are scheduled for Oct. 28 and 29 at two websites within the county.
Paperwork filed with the county present the positioning initially would have 15 Mitsubishi FT8 Mobilepac cellular gasoline generators, every able to producing 30 MW of electrical energy. The land additionally would have greater than 70 buildings as a part of a knowledge heart advanced.
The plan additionally features a second-phase improvement that would come with a everlasting gas-fired energy plant that includes Mitsubishi M501JAC gasoline generators, in a simple-cycle configuration. The doc exhibits the everlasting facility might have a “stack,” which suggests it will embody a number of generators. Mitsubishi charges the M501JAC as producing 330 MW to 453 MW in standalone configuration.
Drawings of the positioning filed as a part of the applying present about 13 acres would home a switchyard and electrical substation, and in addition embody a wastewater therapy facility. The paperwork additionally present easements for gasoline pipelines. The 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline, which carries pure gasoline from the Marcellus and Utica shale performs, runs close to the positioning and is talked about within the utility.
Balico additionally was behind plans to construct the 1.6-GW Chickahominy energy plant in Virginia, a challenge that was deserted in 2022 amid opposition from a number of teams. The corporate wished to construct a pure gasoline pipeline throughout six counties to produce the plant. PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, canceled an interconnection request from the corporate in that very same yr, citing a scarcity of progress in assembly improvement deadlines.
Chickahominy in a press release on its web site wrote, “Sadly, opposition from exterior pursuits and rules, largely superior by the renewable vitality business and state legislators that supported them, made it unattainable to ship pure gasoline to the positioning.” The plant would have been inbuilt Charles Metropolis County.
A 1.1-GW gas-fired energy plant challenge in the identical space was canceled in 2021 amid native opposition. Michigan-based NOVI Vitality had begun planning the C4GT plant in Charles Metropolis Countyin 2016. The ability had been sited close to an industrial park. Regulators authorized the challenge in 2017, however financing issues and opposition from group teams and environmentalists led NOVI to desert its plans.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).
