Introducing Nodal Power: building and revitalizing next-gen power plants from landfill gas to create renewable electricity

Many countries and economies today are learning the importance of energy independence and at a minimum learning to de-risk their energy portfolios. We are seeing natural gas and electricity supply struggle to meet increasing consumer demand.

Energy markets continue to be volatile, as we’ve seen from California blackouts in the summer to the Texas grid shutting down in the winter. More than ever, energy resiliency is paramount, and the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables only makes it more difficult to maintain.

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The problem with the grid

The grid is comprised of aging and centralized legacy power plants that are retiring at record pace. Replacing these baseload resources is proving to be near impossible given regulation and development costs. Renewable sources–such as wind and solar–have been successful, but with those new intermittent resources coupled with the retirements of reliable baseload generation, system operators are struggling to keep the grid reliable.

Where Nodal Power fits in the ecosystem

At Nodal Power we’re hoping to fill a market gap by bringing new, renewable, baseload generation to U.S. power markets. The natural decentralization of our model and flexibility of our development means that we can prioritize development of our projects where they’re most needed and where power prices are strongest.

The focus: landfill gas

There are thousands of active landfills in the U.S. with hundreds of non-active landfills all producing methane gas, a harmful greenhouse gas–about 84x more harmful than CO₂. The EPA mandates that landfills of a certain size flare the gas so as to keep the more destructive methane from entering the atmosphere.

There are hundreds of landfills that have methane underutilization whether due to flaring or low capacity factors at existing projects. We will bring the benefits of a larger landfill project to the small and midsize landfills.

Optimizing existing LFGTE power plants

Every power plant has dispatch constraints due to economics, physical capabilities, or regulatory compliance. Our approach allows for maximum optimization of renewable landfill gas power plants. Nodal’s patent pending technology allows for multiple revenue streams which brings maximum returns and environmental benefits to existing LFGTE power plants:

1. Reduces methane emissions by ~40% when compared to flaring
2. Increases MWh production, which increases ROI
3. Allows the power plant to be a flexible resource for the grid, which can dispatch more or less electricity based on demand

Development of new:

Many landfills don’t meet the immediate requirements for a traditional LFGTE power plant. They either lack proximity to critical infrastructure or have lower volumes of gas flow. With our patent-pending off-grid (no grid connection) datacenter and power generation systems, we are able to quickly deliver beneficial use of this wasted energy source. This brings revenue to the landfill, and reduces methane in the environment. As an added benefit, it allows many projects to be considered for grid connection that previously wouldn’t have been.

High performance compute as a controllable load

Having a datacenter located on-site with the power plant provides a pricing floor for the electricity being generated. Today, Bitcoin mining serves as a great source of compute as it can be brought up or down quickly and doesn’t require the constant uptime that a traditional cloud provider’s datacenter might. A Bitcoin mining datacenter drives strong EBITDA margins and acts as a profit center for the project. Ultimately, it allows a project to be profitable while the time-consuming interconnection process takes place.

Who we are:

We’ve built a unique team to create a scalable model that can modernize a traditional industry. Our team consists of experts in different areas: power plant development, power trading, datacenter development, and Bitcoin mining. And as we grow, we need more great talent that is as excited about grid dynamics as they are about new technologies.  

We’re excited for the future and the road ahead. We have a strong pipeline of targets to deploy against and look forward to finding those that share our vision of bringing new and underutilized renewable energy to the grid.