NET Power Inc. (NYSE:NPWR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So we’re taking the opportunity to upgrade some of our data acquisition, just for enhanced analysis of the cycle.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Wade Suki with Capital One.

Wade Suki : Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I guess just to go back to the supply chain constraints that you kind of discussed earlier in the call. Any update you can give us on cost for SN1 or even more broadly as you think about the OP1?

Brian Allen: Yes, this is Brian. I’ll address the first one. So we’re still in the middle of the FEED with Zachary. We are getting initial information from long-lead suppliers, but we’re not at a point yet where we’ve really gotten, I’ll say, firm negotiated bids that will keep progressing through the FEED in some — probably all the way through mid-next year. Certainly, it’s something we’re watching. And I’ll remind you that we’re in also a value engineering and optimization exercise here. So we’re not just a taker of price. I mean, we — our cycle sets the entire plant design and there’s things we can change and trade-off. So as we keep continuing the FEED process with Zachary and interface with Baker on much of the major equipment, interface with the ASU supplier, interface with our major heat exchanger partner.

All of these things were really optimizing the overall plant design and thus the cost. So that will really come together at the end of the targeting mid next year.

Wade Suki : Great. Thank you. And maybe could you give us some anticipated time — promise not to hold you to it, but anticipated timeline for OP1, just broadly speaking?

Danny Rice: Yes. So I think it’s really interesting. If you look at just the schedule that we have right now for some Project Permian online ’27, beginning at ’28. So we’re talking about four years from now. I mean OP1’s going to be in a position — and possibly OP2 and OP3 as we’ve started to finalize those ones. Now, those are all being positions where assuming that we can get the requisite Class II Class VI permits in place as those just kind of bottlenecks within the EPA for Class VI approvals start to get worked out and you get to that reasonable two to three year kind of time from submittal to approval, which is kind of what the EPA is targeting. You can see a place where those projects are ready to go, like ready to be turned online shortly after serial number one.

And so ultimately, it’s going to be a judgment call for us on how soon after serial number one, do we want to get OP1, OP2, OP3 online. And I guess the obvious question that response would cause is why wouldn’t you guys get it on right afterwards? And I think it’s really a function of making sure that we have as high enough of a confidence in the expected performance of Project Permian before we start ordering the equipment and start really finalizing the design of those follow-on projects. And I think we’re going to learn a lot as we go through this La Porte demonstration testing with Baker over the course of the next 24 months. That’s really going to bring up just our confidence level in the performance of serial number one because it’s just going to be scaled down components that Baker is going to be testing.

That will be really, really good read-throughs to Project Permian. And so as we start to get into this process, this competence will start to build in advance of Project Permian coming online, that will probably want to take advantage of being able to start to bring a lot of that backlog earlier into the end of this decade. So I guess the short answer is you could see it online a year after Project Permian if you wanted to take some technology risk, depending on our competence level. Or you could see it being a year and a half or two years after Project Permian, if we don’t want to take any sort of commercial risk and really know that this project’s going to be able to have all the guarantees and work exactly as performed. But the nice place that we’re at because Brian and the team are really designing this to be a standardized plant design.

It allows us to be able to just swap slots. So as the markets really starts to continue to evolve on power, on the cost to sequester the CO2, some projects today that look to be more economic, by 2027, 2028, they may be less economic than another project. That our markets in that area spark spreads really spike. And the entire back end of that curve really moves up on the power side that we say, it will be more economic to accelerate this project over that project. And because we have the standardized plant design and everything inside of that plant fences identical from one project to the next, that gives us so much flexibility to be opportunistic and take advantage of those really attractive economics as soon as possible. And really allows those projects to rise to the top of the queue.

And so that’s really going to be like the really interesting part of the backlog as we build that is OP2 — OP1 today may not necessarily be that second plant online. If there’s another project that comes along that we originate or that a customer wants that is even more economic and even more beneficial to the community and to the environment that we say it makes more sense for this project to take the next plant that’s in that manufacturing process. But that’s something you can only do if we have the standardized plant design. And that’s certainly one of the strategic reasons why we designed this thing to not bespoke plant like every other thermal plant in the industry today.

Bryce Mendes: I think that makes a lot of sense. One more, if I could squeeze it in, anything cooking internationally that you can speak to?