CERAWEEK: Williams to use modular gas units in early data center power projects

Midstream company Williams sees modularization of smaller natural gas-fired power generating units as a solution to the reliability and speed requirements of data centers, its head of power innovation, Jaclyn Presnal, said March 24.

Williams announced Feb. 10 a 6 gigawatt backlog of its 'power innovation' projects for data centers by the early 2030s, in addition to the roughly 1.4 GW of capacity already under development.

"That 6GW is what we think we can reasonably achieve between now and the early 2030s," Presnal said in an interview on the sidelines of CERAWeek by S&P Global Energy conference in Houston.

Modularization

The initial power innovation projects in development will use small open-cycle turbines to ensure speed to market and reliability.

"We have multiple generation units that are all tied together from an electrical infrastructure perspective, and that's what's able to deliver the full load of the plant," Presnal said.

"Speed to power is an important component of the service that we're able to offer," Presnal said. "Modularization allows us to meet that speed."

Modularization will also help meet the high reliability levels required by data center customers, which range from 99.9% to 99.999%.

"If you're thinking about downtime, even if you have a unit down, the rest of the facility is able to step in and deliver the energy that's required," Presnal said. "If you have one large combined-cycle plant, you can't do that behind the meter and still meet the reliability, because if that plant has an incident, you can't deliver your full requirements at all."

In addition to redundant generation, energy storage can also help with reliability.

"Batteries are a solution that helps us in two ways," Presnal said. "We're able to use batteries to help with AI transient loads to protect our mechanical equipment, but we're also able to use batteries if we do have any interruption in our generation because you have available energy that you can deliver if you have a downtime event."

Presnal stressed that each project is different, and CCGTs will be an option for some projects. "If you've got a very large facility, you're probably going to have to go towards a combined-cycle plant as some point," she said. But if a project consists of smaller tranches that will gradually scale up, "then combined cycle actually doesn't make a ton of sense."

While many of the initial projects will be behind the meter, "the ability to connect those into the grid and have those as distributed grid resiliency resources is an important part of the long-term strategy," she said.

Pipeline opportunities

The power innovation business may eventually lead to expansions of Williams' mainline pipelines.

The Socrates project in Ohio will involve a roughly 20-mile pipeline lateral that connects to two different third-party interstate gas pipelines to source the gas, Presnal said.

"There are no mainline expansions yet, but as we continue to scale the business there are certainly opportunities to have expansion projects that serve directly our power innovation projects."

Data center demand is already leading to expansion projects in Williams' base business, Presnal said, pointing to the 689 million cubic feet/day Transco Power Express project . "That's delivering incremental gas supply into Virginia, very much to serve power generation growth for data centers there," she said. "We don't have power innovation projects specifically off of that project, but it's more of our base business continuing to provide those solutions."

Williams' marketing business, Sequent, will source the gas for the projects, Presnal said.

Emissions

Williams has several tools available to reduce emissions at the power innovation projects, according to Presnal.

These include layering on carbon offsets, supplementing the gas generation with solar and batteries, and using carbon capture and sequestration.

She pointed to the Louisiana Energy Gateway gas-gathering pipeline system, where Williams is developing large-scale carbon-capture facilities at its terminus.

Williams is exploring ways to improve the efficiency at its sites. "Even on the smaller turbines, you can make them closed cycle to increase the efficiency, that's something we're exploring with our OEMs."

Williams is also evaluating waste heat recovery, while fuel cells are "another one to think about," Presnal said.