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| Thursday Sep 18, 2025 | |
| While for most the fast-approaching date of September 30th means the end of the summer or the end of the 3rd quarter of the year, for those in the know it marks the end of 2025. For the Pacific Northwest hydro system, the calendar operates based on the water year, which begins on October 1st and lasts until September 30th. So we are currently less than two weeks away from the end of the 2025 water year and the transition to 2026. With that in mind, attention is starting to turn to the coming fall and the new water year and how things are likely to play out. There has been some excitement this week, starting with a change in the STP streamflow forecast moving a significant volume of water out of October and into September. Total system hydro generation saw a ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 17, 2025 | |
| For the first time in US nuclear history, a nuclear plant that had begun the decommissioning process has returned to operations status. While the Palisades Nuclear plant, located in Michigan, has not yet started providing energy to the grid, it is one step closer. The plant originally retired in 2022 before being purchased by Holtec International. By 2023, the ball was rolling on returning the plant to service as Holtec applied for a loan from the US Department of Energy. Next came a series of meetings and approvals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure the retired plant could operate safely. After repair work, the latest approval came at the end of July as the NRC declared Palisades fit for returning to operations and receiving nuclear fuel. The plant returned to ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 16, 2025 | |
| Our latest special report titled “Congestion on the SPP Road” discusses the congestion impacts on the grid and insights about what’s going on across the SPP region. Historically driven by maintenance-related derates, in today’s world, the grid sees congestion show up due to an influx of renewable power tied to wind and/or solar generation from the growing capacity on the grid. With wind already well established in the region and solar capacity now adding to the midday supply mix, the analysis focuses on how these dynamics have shaped grid performance and congestion trends over the past three summers. Figure 1 | SPP Daily Profile The findings reveal how demand and renewable generation interact to create sharp shifts in net load, particularly during shoulder months ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 15, 2025 | |
| In the West, summer has started to fade into an early fall. Here in Portland, we woke up Sunday morning to the sound of rain, followed by a high temperature in the 60s. On CAISO’s grid, this early taste of fall was marked by a shift in focus from tight conditions in the evening ramp to loose conditions in the midday. The shoulder seasons often mark a sensitive spot for this giant of solar generation, as the sun keeps shining while demand starts to dry up. Figure 1 | CAISO Solar Curtailments, September 2025 The figure above shows recent solar curtailments. Reference lines provide the flat average curtailments for a given day. Here, we see the impact of consistent, strong solar generation paired with falling demand. The values above were not shocking. Given the conditions in play ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 12, 2025 | |
| Garbage in, garbage out. A phrase that underscores the relationship between the quality of input data and the quality of output data. This is a fundamental principle in many fields, including production cost modelling. A goal when operating a production cost model (PCM) is to use input data that is as high quality as possible, with the hope that it will produce output data representative of reality. Not only can it be difficult to obtain high quality data, but it can be difficult defining what “high quality” even means. There is no perfect dataset, and importantly, whatever dataset that is chosen will propagate its biases forward into the results of the PCM. The difficulty in determining what “high quality is” is not to imply that “all datasets are ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 11, 2025 | |
| It was right around a year ago that ERCOT finally edged out CAISO in solar portion of the renewable transition competition. California had the first mover advantage and got off to a significant head start, but over the previous two years ERCOT had been playing catchup when it comes to solar buildout. It was during Q3 of 2024 that ERCOT reached a maximum observed solar potential of 20 GW, reaching the same level as CAISO. Since that time over the past year ERCOT has pulled into the lead. Further east other markets have been making their own frantic investments into solar capacity, with MISO and PJM rocketing up to more than double their capacity from last summer (MISO) or increase by over 50% (PJM). The rapid renewable growth in markets across the country has been ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 10, 2025 | |
| A Level 3 Energy Emergency alert was called on Monday night in Alberta. AESO has three levels of energy emergency alerts, or EEAs, with level 3 defined by AESO as when “firm load interruption is imminent or in progress”. On Monday night, pool prices shot to $999.99/MWh in HE 18 and stayed there until HE 20. The EEA 3 was called at 18:54 and stayed in place for a little over an hour. There were several factors with this event, including above-normal heat, missed forecasts, and limited transmission. The province is in the middle of a long stretch of above-normal temperatures. Combined with structural load growth, the hot weather has brought high levels of demand this summer. Last night’s peak demand came in over 11 GW and a couple hundred megawatts over the forecasted ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 9, 2025 | |
| The Midwest has been under a prolonged stretch of colder-than-normal weather since late August, with average temperatures dropping well below seasonal norms. By early September, daytime highs were averaging in the 60s, more than 15 degrees below normal, and the cold pattern is expected to continue this week. Forecasts suggest the northern parts of MISO will stay cool with lows dipping into the 40s, while southern areas will also experience brief cooler conditions. Figure 1 | Midwest Average Temperatures and Differences from Normal (Aug. – Sept. 2025) This drop in temperatures has directly reduced electricity demand across the MISO grid. Peak demand, which often tops 90 GW in late summer, came in significantly lower, with peaks in the 70s GW range. At the same time, wind generation ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 8, 2025 | |
| SPP has experienced both worlds from warmer to cooler-than-normal conditions this summer. Weather patterns have been milder than average since late spring, particularly in May and June, when Cooling Degree Days (CDDs) registered well below historical norms. July saw more typical summer heat, but August brought alternating stretches of above and below-normal temperatures, with cumulative CDDs falling short of both 2024 levels and the long-term average. These fluctuations underscore how weather continues to be a major driver of volatility in demand, net load, and prices across the region. Figure 1 | South SPP Monthly Cumulative CDDs in May through August (2017 – 2025) On the demand side, July’s stronger heat elevated loads above recent years, while August’s milder ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 5, 2025 | |
| I (Tim Belden) recently participated in NewsData’s “Western Energy Summit” held in Boise, Idaho at the end of August. It was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in a while. It sounds like they plan to make it an annual thing – put it on your radar for next year. The general theme related to how will the WECC meet the combined challenges of the future – keep the lights on in an era of strong load growth, meet the blue state de-carbonization goals which require resource additions at an unprecedented level, coordinate the natural gas and power sectors during the coldest days of the winter, all while managing the costs for utility customers. Figure 1 | Western Energy Summit - NewsData We heard from a dizzying array of regional, national, and ... » read more | |