By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Low natural gas prices, hotter summer weather, and new generation capacity sent U.S. natural gas-fired power generation to a new all-time high this summer, on some days of which gas-fired electricity made up nearly half of total power output.
This summer’s record-high was hit on August 2, when America’s natural gas-fired power plants generated more than 7 million megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday.
The record on that day beat by 6.8% the previous summer’s record set on July 28, 2023, the EIA said.
Nine out of the ten days with the most U.S. natural gas-fired electricity generation on record occurred in the summer of 2024. Of those, six occurred in August 2024.
Overall electricity generation for the summer of 2024, June through August, rose by 3% compared to the summer of 2023. The daily average for natural gas-fired electricity generation for the summer this year also increased by 3% year-over-year, to 5.9 million MWh, according to the EIA’s Hourly Electric Grid Monitor.
“Over the past few years, the balance of sources of electricity generation in the United States—especially in the summer—has shifted to more renewables and natural gas and less coal,” the EIA said.
“As electric generation capacity from renewable sources grows, natural gas is used increasingly to balance the intermittent nature of electricity produced from wind and solar.”
So far this year, natural gas-fired power generation in the United States has soared to a record high.
U.S. power producers generated a total of 55.6 million MWh from gas-fired power plants between January and September, up by 5% compared to the same period of last year, according to data from LSEG quoted by Reuters’s columnist Gavin Maguire. This is also the highest power generation from natural gas since at least 2021.
In recent years, power demand in the United States, the single largest portion of which is delivered by gas-fired power plants, has soared and is expected to continue to surge with rising electrification and more electricity necessary to power and cool data centers.
