Years ago as a young-ish analyst I learned an important thing about building meaningful information products: they require both a supply push and a demand pull in order to really work. If there is supply and no demand, no one will buy; if there is demand and no supply, there is nothing to sell. Demand signals also provide the inception point to create supply. This is generally understood — as I said, I was a young-ish analyst at the time. 

Not long after, I set a rule for myself that provides a richer sense of meaning for information: when a development is a matter of high uncertainty and high significance, it is worth finding out everything you can. Analysis is one way to do that: create a transparent, informed view on what might happen in the future.  

But there is another way too, and it is more real in the here and now and more reactive to change: create an information system to capture exactly what is happening right now. Anecdata — evidence based on observation —  are nice; real data are better. Static observations are a fine start; dynamic understandings are ideal. 

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Earlier this week, NRG, one of the biggest power generators in the US, announced that it will buy 13 gigawatts of gas plants from LS Power. NRG’s investor presentation says that the deal “Transforms Generation Fleet with Irreplicable Assets in Core Markets.” A $2 trillion machine is rotating towards growth after decades of flat demand, and the sector’s biggest players are jockeying for position in an expanding market. Of course, there is a data center angle too. 

But not every company can buy its way into the right parts of the existing market. As NRG mentions in its presentation, it has the potential for only an additional gigawatt of expansion within the fleet it is purchasing, and that will come from uprating existing plants. When it comes to adding new gas-fired power generation, cost and speed are the determining factors.  

On its last earnings call, NextEra CEO John Ketchum said that “the cost to build a gas-fired plant has tripled in the last few years – and is poised to increase even further due to tariff exposure.” Investment bank Jeffries says that the cost of a gas plant has risen 50% in the past 10 months, and that wait times for turbines are now five years. In Texas, gas-fired power plants supported by the Texas Energy Fund and meant to provide reliable service in a short window of time are dropping out of contention thanks to rising costs. 

Individually, these news items are anecdotes; together, they are anecdata — the start of an inquiry, but not the end of it. We now know what to expect for future gas plant prices; we do not know, from the comments above, exactly where and how those prices are manifesting right now, nor do we have the instrumentation to detect when they might change, and how, and why. 

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But, that is not to say that there are no data. There are, in fact, more data points than you might think regarding the cost of building a gas-fired power plant in the US today. These data points are public, but only if you are capable of parsing an information flow of tens of thousands of new filings a month across 50 different state public utility commissions. And the data are updated frequently too, but via testimony and submitted progress updates rather than via press releases or spreadsheets. 

This is an unstructured information problem asking for discovery, harmonization, and breadth. And that is why Halcyon is building our first data product: a US gas power plant tracker.

Today’s gas plant pricing environment has supply and demand, and it is certainly high uncertainty and high significance. It is also addressable with technology, which is how Halcyon is tracking dozens of plants under development right now in deep detail. We incorporate not just capital costs, but a host of other relevant information.  

To make it more concrete: here is a glimpse of some of our data collection from Q4 2024 - today. Think of it as a way to move from the anecdata mentioned above to real data. Some context for the chart below: in its most recent benchmarking effort in December ‘23, the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) capital cost estimate for a single shaft combustion turbine gas plant is $921 per kilowatt, and its benchmark for a combined cycle gas plant is $868 per kilowatt (source, p 43 and 35 respectively).

None of the prices here are close to those EIA benchmarks. 

More importantly, these prices are all over the place. And their variance depends on factors which a press release will not typically provide: precise plant location, expected commission timeline, potential tariff impact, how receptive or hostile state regulators are to changing costs, key permissions and approvals, interventions from market participants, and many more factors. 

These factors, however, are exactly what Halcyon can track via an expanding catalog of high-quality information published at the state and federal level. These attributes are not tabular by nature — they can only be made so once extracted from unstructured information. And Halcyon’s tracker will be dynamic: not a quarterly output (though that sort of thing has its value!) but rather a continuous observation-and-description of each asset and of the market at large.

We believe that our gas plant tracker will be an important contribution to many different processes and personas: strategic planning for power developers; supply/demand balances for traders; price points for engineers; public engagement for policymakers. In other words: if you are reading this, we think it will be important for your work.  

We are ready to share our findings with you now. We are looking for early adopters who share our conviction about the importance of clear, transparent, dynamic data about a prime mover of the US electricity system. If you’re ready for it, then contact us here. 

We will have a broader-scope version available soon as well — but by joining us early in the process, you get the opportunity to help mold and shape the final output — so we hope you will. Drop us a line. We look forward to hearing from you, and working with you.

Comments or questions? We’d love to hear from you - sayhi@halcyon.io, or find us on LinkedIn and Twitter