Are developers building more power generation capacity than U.S. markets can bear?
NEWGen, a new database from RDI Consulting, reveals that U.S. developers and utilities propose 180,000 megawatts of new capacity nationwide. Of this amount, 10,000 MW is in operation. An additional 11,000 MW has been postponed indefinitely or canceled. That leaves 159,000 MW of competing projects in a market that most likely can absorb only 15,000 to 17,000 MW of additions per year.
As has been widely discussed, nearly 50 percent of all development activity is concentrated in the western United States, Texas and the Northeast. Only 10 percent of all proposed projects in the West, however, are in operation or under construction. Developers are having much more success in Texas, where 41 percent of all proposed capacity has moved off the drawing board and into the ground.