US future capacity pipeline, 36 months

Future capacity pipeline, 36 months, version 1.0

What it is. A modeled estimate of the nameplate generation capacity (MW) that will come online in the United States within the next 36 months, from EIA's planned generator inventory (Form EIA-860M) weighted by how far each project has progressed. It is not a forecast of what will be built; it is the reported pipeline discounted by stage.

Formula. For the data month M of an EIA-860M file, over every row of the Planned sheet (stored in capacity_projects with source eia_860m and file month M):

pipeline_36(M) = sum over rows with planned operation date at or before M + 36 months of nameplate_MW x weight(status)

Weights (version 1.0). planned (EIA codes P, L, OT) 0.3; permitted (T) 0.6; under construction (U, V) 0.9; testing (TS, construction complete) 0.95. Rows whose planned operation date is before M (overdue projects still listed as planned) are included in every horizon; rows without a date are excluded and their MW reported in the observation metadata as undated.

Why these weights. They are round assumptions ordered by stage, chosen so that construction counts almost fully and paperwork counts a little. They are not fitted to historical completion rates. A later version may replace them with observed completion rates by status and technology from the same source; until then every value carries the modeled badge.

Components. Observed: capacity_projects rows from the EIA-860M Planned sheet (plant, generator, technology, nameplate MW, planned operation month, status code). Each observation stores the unweighted MW by status, the weights used, the weighted MW by status, the overdue and undated MW, and the file's sha256.

Limits. EIA excludes facilities under 1 MW. Developers report planned dates that slip; the same generator can appear for years. Cancellations move rows to a separate sheet and drop out of the pipeline only in the file after they are reported.