Natural Gas, April 11, 2019, T+99, Part 2 -- Making America Great

Updates

April 12, 2019: with regard to the note below, a reader noted --

"Unfortunately: NGCC power plants are less efficient than other forms of natural gas-fired capacity." Did you mean non combined cycle are less efficient - like single stage peak load generators....the other 1/2?

Original Post

Natural gas milestone, 2018: US natural gas-fired combined-cycle capacity overtook coal-fired capacity in 2018.

NGCC.

• 2019, US:
• NGCC capacity: 264 GW
• coal plant capacity: 243 GW
• NGCC capacity: accounts for about half of all natural gas-fired capacity in the US

Unfortunately: NGCC power plants are less efficient than other forms of natural gas-fired capacity.

Last four years:

• coal: shed 40 GW of capacity
• NGCC: added about 30 GW 

Examples:

• Duke Energy: $1.5 billion, 1.64 GW Citrus Combined Cycle Station in Florida
• Dominion Energy: $1.3 billion, 1.6 GW Greensville station in Virginia

$1.5 billion / 1.6 GW =  $1 million / MW
New natural gas capacity for 2019: should add 6 GW of electricity -- mostly in PA, FL, and LA

It's very interesting: California is not mentioned in the article. In fact, the entire west coast is AWOL.

*******************************

Skills For The 21st Century