Now that summer is over, we can assess how well the EIA-860M predicted the summer build. The chart below compares the May EIA-860M to the latest August report. Note: Vulcan UC makes it easy for you to generate these types of reports via our Snowflake integration with Tableau.
From June to July, the number of plants becoming operational fell short of the May projections, suggesting potential supply chain issues or delays in EIA-860M reporting. The amount of proposed online date for December 2024 has increased by 20%, partly due to these shifted dates. Interestingly, some plants, primarily solar, have come online earlier than anticipated.
Vulcan UC is designed to improve this accuracy. We can identify plants listed too early or those that might come online sooner than projected. We're working on refining our methodology for determining the most likely online date.
As shown in the charts, a significant number of plants are expected to come online before winter. We added over 40 GW of plants last week, bringing our total monitored projects to over 120 GW. This represents nearly 80% of proposed plants from now to 2027.
The chart below illustrates our coverage for this year and next year relative to the total proposed. Blue bars indicate projects we're not covering, primarily due to completion or advanced construction stages. We're manually reviewing these projects to determine their construction start dates and potential winter completion.
We have high certainty that 3.2 GW will miss the 2024 build schedule. For example, plant ID 65860 Avila (Battery), located in Pecos County, Texas, with a planned operation date of December 2024, was identified by Vulcan UC as starting construction between August 20 and 28 of this year. Based on our earliest schedule for a battery of this size, we estimate a construction completion date of February 23, 2025. This optimistic timeline is unlikely to be met, making it highly probable that this battery project will miss the winter season. The images below provide visual evidence of this conclusion for Avila battery project.
8/16/2024 9/18/2024
