Markets / CAISO
CAISO (California)
A large gas fleet, and effectively no new gas being built.
~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 signed, near-term merchant gas figure is zero for practical purposes.
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.