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Cassady Craighill is technical education director at GridLab, a nonprofit technical consulting organization focused on the electric grid.
As energy demand accelerates, major utilities across the country are rushing to build new gas plants to meet the data center boom.
Gas dominated the PJM Interconnection’s recent interconnection queue, which was reopened for the first time in four years. Gas now represents nearly half of the entire 220-GW queue, nearly doubling what was already in the works in utility plans as of last year. Gas has also dominated the Midcontinent Independent System Operator's fast-track interconnection process, representing nearly three-quarters of the projects included in its Expedited Resource Addition Study. Some of the largest utilities in the United States — Georgia Power, Duke Energy, Dominion Energy — have announced significant capital investment in new gas generation plants to meet data center load growth.
While utilities often seek approval for new gas plants based solely on their upfront construction costs, a new analysis by Current Energy Group and GridLab reveals these "sticker prices" omit a slew of hidden infrastructure costs, including mandatory, long-term contracts for firm pipeline transportation, gas storage and gas processing equipment.
