AI | Electrical Generation | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Williams | Wood County (OH)
Will-Power 3rd OH Facebook Gas-Fired Plant Begins Const. Any Time
In December, MDN reported that pipeline giant Williams, through its new subsidiary, Will-Power, plans to build a third gas-fired power plant to power a Meta (Facebook) data center complex in Bowling Green, OH (see Will-Power to Build Third Facebook Gas-Fired Plant Near Toledo). The project will use 21 natural gas turbines, generators, and backup diesel generators for reliability. Will-Power aims to have 150 MW online by July 2027 and the full 350 MW by October 2027. Great news! The Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) has authorized the construction of the facility, which is likely to begin this week. Read More “Will-Power 3rd OH Facebook Gas-Fired Plant Begins Const. Any Time”
In early April, MDN brought you the exciting news that pipeline giant Williams, via its newly-minted subsidiary, Will-Power, is planning to build two Utica/Marcellus gas-fired power plants in the New Albany International Business Park in Licking County, Ohio, near Columbus, to power a massive new Meta (Facebook) data center complex (see 
We feel like it’s “peaker” day here at MDN. We have three stories that revolve around peaker gas-fired power plants. What is a peaker? It’s a gas-fired power plant that pops on and gets used only during the heaviest electric usage times, like really hot days in the summer and really cold days during the winter. “Baseload,” on the other hand, are gas plants that run constantly. LS Power, a huge power generation company that owns and operates some 50,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation, including utility-scale solar, wind, hydro, battery energy storage, and natural gas-fired facilities, announced on Friday a plan to add more than 700 MW of new electric generating capacity across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia. The plan includes promoting (upgrading) two peakers, one in PA and one in OH, to become full-time baseload plants. More yummy Marcellus and Utica gas will be required to feed these plants. 
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, has hired environmental company Verdantas LLC to fly drones over Bowling Green (Wood County), OH, to try and identify any hidden orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. Residents of Bowling Green received a letter from ODNR alerting them to the upcoming drone flights.
LS Power, which owns a number of competitive power generation projects including the 700 megawatt dual-fuel simple cycle Troy Generating Facility located in Luckey, OH, is threatening to pull a $500 million plan to expand the Troy facility if Ohio proceeds to pass a new law subsidizing the state’s two nuclear plants. The subsidies would create an uneven playing field for natural gas-fired electric plants like the Troy facility.
Holy Toledo! Enbridge, a really big pipeline company headquartered in Calgary, Canada, is in the process of buying the 23-mile Generation Pipeline located in northwest Ohio for $100 million. Enbridge owns the Texas Eastern Transmission Company (Tetco), as well as a 50% share in the NEXUS Utica Shale pipeline in the Marcellus/Utica region. It is that later project, NEXUS, that prompted Enbridge to pursue a purchase of Generation Pipeline.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last Thursday granted Rover Pipeline permission to resume horizontal directional drilling (HDD) at four more locations where it had been stopped. One of those locations is drilling under the Ohio River in the Majorsville area. Rover is a $3.7 billion, 711-mile natural gas pipeline that (will eventually) run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and on to Canada. A large portion of the pipeline began flowing natural gas on Sept. 1st (see 
When we notice municipal referendums and ballot measures related to blocking shale drilling and pipelines, we always highlight them. Such a ballot measure appeared on the ballot in Bowling Green (Wood County), OH on Tuesday. We honestly were not aware of it prior to reading an article in the Toledo Blade. The ballot measure called for a ban on pipelines that flow natural gas and other fossil fuels over city-owned property. It’s aim is to prevent NEXUS Pipeline from building nearby. Antis got enough signatures for this glittering jewel to appear on the November ballot. And how did the good people of Bowling Green vote? They saw right through this one–voting it DOWN by a huge margin: 61%-39%. That’s a blowout, politically. But you know antis. Nothing, including the truth, will ever change their minds. The Bowling Green ballot measure was the work of out-of-towners–the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF)–about whom we’ve written plenty (
In January 2016, Kinder Morgan committed to building the UTOPIA (Utica To Ontario Pipeline Access) pipeline, a 12-inch ethane pipeline that will run ~240 miles across the state of Ohio where it will connect with another pipeline and (eventually) flow ethane all the way to a cracker plant in Canada (see 
All seven members of the Bowling Green City Council (Wood County) unwisely voted to reject an offer from Spectra Energy’s NEXUS Pipeline to lease 4 acres of city-owned land for the pipeline. Why unwise? Because the project is close to receiving its final federal approval, which will give it the right to use eminent domain to use the land anyway (see 