The U.S. electric grid, a trusted engine for economic sovereignty and growth, is struggling to keep pace with the demands of a modern economy. Sputtering along on today’s 1.3 million megawatts (MW) of generation, booming industries plead for the supplementary generation commanded by computational power, superior process design, and electrification. A growing currency in the 21st century economy, investors track the proliferation of new generation across the country – construction projects bound to incite investment and expansion into these contending regions .

Going Vertical with New Electric Power

Some help is on the way. At the moment, 132,000 MW of new generation capacity projects are either permitted or under construction, according to the American Public Power Association’s 2024 Generation Capacity Update. Projects that could generate an additional 335,000 MW are pending review.

Compelled to reduce carbon emissions and emboldened by advances in distributed energy resources, this new wave of energy projects doesn’t look like its 20th-century counterparts. Much of the new generation capacity under development is for solar energy (51%), followed by wind (33%) and natural gas (7%).

Where are these new projects going? Roughly 75 percent of all capacity either permitted or under construction is going to just four of the six regional authorities, stretching from the Nevada sagebrush, down to the grasslands of Texas, and east to the salty Atlantic coastlines.

Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC)

The largest of six regional entities given authority by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, WECC has the largest share of plants under construction. However, WECC only holds 13 percent of all U.S. permitted generation.

• 2023 Generation – 16%
• Under Construction – 31%
• Permitted – 13%
• Pending Application – 23%
• Proposed – 26%

Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, Mexico Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington
Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.

Southeastern Electric Reliability Corporation (SERC)

Covering portions or the entirety of these sixteen states on either side of the Mississippi River, SERC has a quarter of all U.S. plants under construction and the second-largest share of permitted plants.

• 2023 Generation – 33%
• Under Construction – 25%
• Permitted Plants – 15%
• Pending Application – 8%
• Proposed Plants – 18%

Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina

ERCOT (Texas)

Both SERC and WECC make up most of the capacity under construction in the U.S., but vast amounts of capacity are also planned in ERCOT (Texas), which manages 90% of the state’s electric load. Nearly half of all permitted projects fall within ERCOT, a nod to future capacity hunters that Texas is loading up for the energy arms race.

• 2023 Generation – 11%
• Under Construction – 20%
• Permitted – 42%
• Pending Application – 49%
• Proposed – 1%

Reliability First Corporation (RFC)

Serving the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes within the eastern interconnection, RFC held 23% of all 2023 U.S. Generation. Yet it comes in fourth at 15% of new capacity under construction and only 13% of all permitted plants.

• 2023 Generation – 23%
• Under Construction – 15%
• Permitted Plants – 13%
• Pending Application – 8%
• Proposed – 15%

Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, District of Columbia.

The Resounding Answer for Future Capacity: An All the Above Strategy!

A relic term still recited despite its pervasiveness across the grid, alternative energy is dominating new energy construction projects. Tribute to the pace of adoption, today 66% of plants permitted or under construction are using solar energy technology. The U.S. Energy Information Administration anticipates that solar and battery storage will make up 81% of new U.S. electric-generating capacity this year. Faster and cheaper to deploy, and insulated from the volatility of traditional fuel sources, solar capacity has skyrocketed in most areas. However, the generating capabilities of today’s solar, wind, and battery storage solutions are a mere taste of what data hungry enterprises desire.

Natural gas is the largest source of U.S. generation capacity today (44%) and makes up a significant share of the capacity added over the last decade. While many utilities around the country have signaled an interim dependence upon new gas-fired generation to bridge power deficits, including those associated with coal retirements, these solutions are not as imminent as some would hope, as natural gas generation makes up only 9.5% of all capacity under construction. Even so, discounting the role of natural gas in the context of swelling energy demand would prove myopic. A pillar of the U.S. grid system and trustworthy dispatchable resource under today’s demanding conditions, natural gas-fired power generation might soon have its second act.

Don’t call it a comeback – nuclear has been powering roughly 20% of the U.S. economy for decades, and the pros and cons of a nuclear renaissance have been debated for years. That said, there are signs of progress. In June 2024, TerraPower broke ground on the construction of the Natrium Reactor demonstration project, a Bill Gates and GE-Hitachi technology venture claiming the first advanced reactor project to move from design into construction. The project features a 345-500 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor with a molten salt-based energy storage system. Alas, only non-nuclear construction has commenced, the rest pending application approval.

While similar advanced nuclear pronouncements can be found across the U.S., zero U.S. nuclear reactors are under construction today and none have both approvals and funding in place. To further place this in context, there are sixty reactors under construction in sixteen countries around the world. China has twenty-six reactors under construction, while India has seven, Russia four, and the U.K. two.

While many other fuel types are being evaluated in an attempt to wrestle with the pressures of digitization, few energy solutions offer regional planning organizations the requisite deployment and scalability means to overcome both high-voltage transmission constraints and federal approvals in a timely manner