Markets / CAISO
CAISO (California)
A large gas fleet, and effectively no new gas being built.
~0GW
Signed, near-term gas
29GW
Existing gas
~0GW
Planned gas
Signed, near-term gas = merchant projects with a signed interconnection agreement and requested operation by 2028, from the ISO's own queue, with ownership checked project by project where the queue does not name developers. Existing and planned from EIA-860M, August 2026.
Updated October 2026 from CAISO's interconnection queue of October 4, 2026. Existing and planned gas are from EIA-860M, August 2026.
CAISO has a substantial existing gas fleet, about 29 GW, and its planned new gas is zero. Its interconnection queue lists about half a gigawatt of gas across six projects. Five have signed agreements, but they are mostly batteries being added at existing gas plants, so they add no new gas capacity. The signed, near-term new gas figure is zero.
California policy is phasing gas down, not adding it. For a data center looking for new grid-connected gas generation, CAISO is effectively off the table as a large new-build market. 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 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.