Excellent new investigation on proposed gas power expansion by US utilities to support mega-customers, by Jeff St. John Canary Media. It covers a lot of ground. Here are a few highlights. (🧵1/8) canarymedia.com/articles/utili…

The proposed gas is not primarily 'peaker' plants (CTs), as some have claimed. It's primarily combined cycle plants, designed to run much more often - most clearly illustrated by Duke, but also Dominion/Santee, which are pushing to fast-track a 2GW combined cycle plant. (2/8)

This is especially surprising given the nature of the peaking events these utilities claim necessitate large volumes of new gas, which are primarily short-duration winter morning 'needle' peaks. (3/8)

Most if not all these utilities are assuming a maximalist, worst-case scenario where new mega-customers are 100% inflexible even during extreme contingency events, and they've declined to seriously explore alternative solutions, e.g. here's Duke: (4/8) duke-energy.com/-/media/pdfs/o…