Tafel Power

Markets / CAISO

CAISO (California)

A large gas fleet, and effectively no new gas being built.

CaliforniaRegulated, decarbonizing

~0GW

Deliverable gas

29GW

Existing gas

~0GW

Planned gas

Deliverable = signed interconnection agreement, in service by 2028, merchant (reconciled from the ISO's own queue). Existing and planned from EIA-860M.


CAISO has a substantial existing gas fleet, about 29 GW, but its interconnection queue holds only around half a gigawatt of gas, all early-stage, and its planned new gas is effectively zero. California policy is retiring gas, not adding it, so the deliverable new-gas figure is zero for practical purposes.

For a data center that needs firm gas, CAISO is off the table on the supply side. Firm power in California comes from the existing fleet, storage, imports, and increasingly from behind-the-meter arrangements, not from new gas generation.

The interesting CAISO story is not gas. It is how a market with a large legacy gas fleet and an aggressive decarbonization mandate meets round-the-clock AI load without new thermal capacity. That is a different analysis than the gas-supply question that defines ERCOT and the Gulf.


Other markets

The cross-ISO overview