RWE's US expansion plan of $20 billion includes gas-fired power stations

RWE, Germany’s largest power producer, announced on Thursday that it would invest in new gas-fired plants to expand more aggressively in the United States, a market where data centres are a major factor in power demand.

The move is a major push from Germany's largest utility into a market where rapid construction of data centers,?as?well as the need for modernising ageing power infrastructure, has fueled a boom in the generation assets and network equipment.

The 'hyperscalers', or big tech companies, are primarily responsible for this trend. They plan to spend $600 billion on artificial intelligence in 2018, a technology which requires a lot of power.

RWE's total planned expenditure in the U.S. will be 17 billion euros (20 billion dollars), or almost half of what the company plans to spend by 2031.

The company stated that the installed capacity in 'the United States' is expected to rise to 22 GW.

RWE announced that it was actively developing 5 GW of pipeline gas-fired plant?projects within the United States, and added that more than 3 GW will be realized by 2035.

(source: Reuters)