In a roundtable discussion, several executives discussed economic recovery, technology developments, fuel price stability and the effect of renewable generation on prospects for new gas-fired projects. Barry Nicholls from Siemens Energy said that they used to forecast based on economic growth and peak load growth and reserve margins and those kinds of statistics. Right now, new project orders are not necessarily or exclusively related to those traditional indicators. Jeff Schroeter stated that gas-fired generation, whether peaking or combined cycle, is the quickest available default power supply that they can have in a power planning perspective. Nicholls added that the enemy of gas generation was volatility in the fuel price, which is 80% of the pro forma, just the opposite of what a coal plant would be. Gas is a relatively stable bet now compared to a lot of other things that could happen to a lot of other technologies.
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