Gas power: decline rates?

This data-file tabulates the power generation profiles of 3,000 US natural gas-fired power plants, which have reported data to the US EIA, aggregated using in-house web-scraping software.


Unlike wind and solar assets, which exhibit clear decline rates of 1.5% and 2.5% per year, natural gas assets run at c44% of their peak utilization rates on average, which does not change materially over time, flexing within an interquartile range that spans from 14% to 74%.

In other words, gas power plants provide flexibility and long-term reliability in a grid, as they are dialled up and dialled down over time to meet demand. This is also illustrated by looking at the underlying data of individual power plants in the file (chart below).

The data-file also presents a cautionary tale from California. To accomodate 40TWH of new utility-scale renewables generation, we show that 35TWH of gas generation has now been permanently shuttered and another 11TWH has been idled. These closures are equivalent to 30% of California’s baseload and 17% of its peakload power capacity, providing one explanation for the State’s recent rolling black-outs. Full details are split out in the data-file.

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