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Supply chain problems driving up new gas turbine prices as solar & storage compete on cost
ST. LOUIS, MO — Amid surging costs for new turbines, Ameren Missouri announced today its plan to build a new 2.1 gigawatt (GW) gas plant in St. Charles County. While the monopoly utility’s press release does not include a cost-estimate, the cost of a similarly sized project in South Carolina recently doubled from $2.5 billion to $5 billion. Meanwhile, a new energy project in Arkansas is estimated to cost $3.5 billion for 1.6GW of solar and 1.9GW of storage, with no state-level incentives, making it cost-competitive with Ameren’s gas plant while providing similar benefits to the grid.
Ameren Missouri is poised to request the use of Construction Work In Progress (CWIP) for this project, which lawmakers enabled via Senate Bill 4. If granted by the Public Service Commission, Ameren will be allowed to increase monthly bills to pay for construction years in advance of the gas plant providing service to customers, like generating electricity. Independent analysis has revealed that CWIP increases the costs of projects and those costs outpace the alleged savings on interest rates. It also remains unclear how much of this project will be paid for by data center customers.
