Energy management and generation firm VoltaGrid has partnered with gas engine provider Jenbacher to co-develop and deploy a new natural gas power plant platform for data centers.
The Qpac platform is a modular natural gas power system, with each reciprocating node generating up to 20MW of power. The partners say the nodes can be combined to deliver up to 200MW of prime power under a minor source air permit.
Volta claims it will be able to deploy up to 50MW of QPac units per month, with deliveries commencing to US customers beginning in 2025.
The platform is tailored towards the increasing energy demands of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. According to the partners, the system's high-pressure injection generation will allow unparalleled load acceptance capabilities, and projected plant reliability will exceed 99.9 percent, making it well-suited to the power needs of AI data centers.
In addition, the system has been designed to be upgraded to operate with hydrogen fuel in the future and to meet stringent local noise requirements, which target a sound level of 65dBA (unit used to measure the loudness of noise as perceived by the human ear) at 33 feet.
Volta has supplied several data centers with mobile gas turbines. In August, it agreed to supply the Elon Musk-owned xAI Memphis data center with 14 mobile generators, each of which is capable of providing 2.5MW, giving it an additional 35MW of power capacity.
Jenbacher is an Autrian power equipment producer focusing on the renewable gas, natural gas, and hydrogen-rich sectors.
Natural gas power is becoming increasingly popular among data center operators, who are scrambling to acquire reliable energy for their operations.
Last week, Gryphon Digital Mining purchased an 850-acre industrial site in southern Alberta, which has access to a natural gas supply from Captus Energy. Gryphon plans to develop an on-site AI and high-performance computing data center directly powered by natural gas.
Major energy companies have also been getting in on the act, with multinational oil and gas major ExxonMobil revealing plans for a new 1.5GW natural gas-fired power plant dedicated to powering data centers last year.
