Huge New Natural Gas Electric Plant Proposed For Chicago Area -- February 2, 2016

I'll let readers point out where I am wrong.

From Crain's Chicago Business:

Think of things Chicago has in abundance and cold weather, steakhouses and corrupt politicians might come to mind.

You might not add electricity to this list, but you ought to. With five mammoth nuclear stations and several coal-fired facilities furnishing more than enough juice to keep lights burning bright here, building a huge new plant might cause some head-scratching.

But a Maryland-based power generator plans to do just that. Competitive Power Ventures Holdings, based in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Silver Springs, says it's constructing an 1,100-megawatt plant fueled by natural gas in Grundy County, about 50 miles southwest of Chicago, near Exelon's existing Dresden nuclear plant.

That's an unusually large combined-cycle gas plant, generating enough to power 1.1 million homes—more than either of Dresden's two reactors. (Dresden as a whole can power 1.5 million homes.)

CPV unveiled the $1 billion-plus CPV Three Rivers Energy Center, as it's called, on January 28, 2016. The facility will be built and run strictly by union workers. The project is expected to create about 500 construction jobs and 25 full-time jobs once built.

My comments to the reader who sent me the link:

As plants get bigger, economy of scale comes into play. Something doesn't make sense with this. The most I've seen a natural gas plan cost is about $850,000/MW. 

This one is said to be $1 billion-plus for 1,100 MW.

Even at $1 billion, that works out to over $900,000/MW -- my hunch is that cost overruns will easily put this into the $1 million / MW ballpark.

Maybe readers can point out something I missed. I often make simple arithmetic errors. Perhaps I put the decimal point in the wrong place.

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Apparently The Science Is Not Settled

NOAA data shows downward trend of extreme high temps since 1930s.

Of course, the warmists cannot handle this. Reminds me of the Romantic Period which followed the Industrial Revolution.