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| Thursday Oct 9, 2025 | |
| Our blog yesterday touched on the current market conditions in the West, prompting increased renewable curtailments in CAISO over the weekend. These curtailments were tied to a combination of moderating temperatures within the state along with very strong solar potential generation hitting the grid, leading to a middle of the day oversupply. Generation can get caught in pockets of congestion without sufficient demand in the region for the supply and insufficient transmission capacity to get the MW to where they need to go. CAISO year-to-date curtailments have been at record levels for the entirety of the year so far, and last during the last month separated even farther from previous years. During the month of September, CAISO added 156 GWh of solar cuts, compared ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 8, 2025 | |
| The market conditions out West presented renewable curtailments over the weekend as temperatures were moderating, thus bringing down the net load while potential solar was tapping the 22 GW mark at its peak. Figure 1 | CAISO Solar Potential Profile – Solar Hours The graph above displays the past seven days of potential solar output, which is made up of actual megawatts hitting the grid (gray bars) and how much was curtailed (orange/blue bars). What is clear is the 4th was the day of reckoning as the solar block of hours averaged roughly 4 GW of curtailments with the highest hour displaying 5.8 GW. The curtailment is a strong indicator of some sort of congestion, especially if the curtailments show up in the local bucket. Leading up to the 4th, the day-ahead auction clears ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 7, 2025 | |
| The natural gas market is going through its seasonal transition phase as summer dynamics fade, and winter preparation begins as highlighted in our latest special report focusing on Alberta’s gas market. Storage levels are now in sharp focus, with inventories nearing capacity and influencing price sentiment. As October marks the end of the injection season, the timing of colder temperatures will be critical in shaping early-winter dynamics. Warmer-than-normal weather across Alberta and British Columbia is currently keeping demand modest, with only brief temperature dips offering limited heating demand support. Figure 1 | AECO Weather Forecast, October 6-October 20 – AG2 Trader On the supply front, Alberta has seen volatility through the fall as production adjusted to pipeline ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 6, 2025 | |
| The fall season brings many changes to power and natural gas markets. One such change comes to the West’s wind generation. Although not typically the strongest period for wind generation, it can be the most volatile. Santa Ana winds are terrifying example, where pressure differences can cause an explosion of downslope winds westbound into SoCal. We can also see strong weather systems over the Pacific that hit the coast from the west. It is not unusual to see output like what is shown in the next two figures, with near-zero generation punctuated by seemingly random bursts of MWs. Figure 1 | BPA Wind Forecast (EGPS), (MW) Our first figure comes from our BPA Wind Generation Forecast. This chart shows actual BPA wind generation (blue) and the EGPS forecast for past and upcoming days ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 3, 2025 | |
| So far this fall (and the preceding summer), temperatures in ERCOT have remained largely normal—not cool, but not especially hot. However, despite the lack of extreme weather, demand has been robust. Figure 1 | ERCOT HL Demand by Houston Temperature, Sep – Nov, 2023 – 2025 The figure above plots ERCOT HLH average demand against Houston temperature for weekdays during September, October, and November, this year and the past two years; each dot represents a day. This year (blue) immediately stands out. The past two years had relatively similar demand at a given temperature level (2023's extreme high temperatures are visible as it has the datapoints furthest to the right), but in contrast, this year has had markedly higher demand at every temperature shown. Another lens ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 2, 2025 | |
| The 4th quarter of 2025 has only just begun, but it already feels like fall has arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Each day waking up the morning air is feeling crisp and Mother Nature has delivered some of Portland’s signature rain this week after a drier than average September along the I-5 corridor. Temperatures are still moderate but are expected to cool significantly throughout the broader Pacific Northwest region over the next five days, including producing what would be the first freezing temperatures of the quarter overnight this Sunday in western Montana as well as Southern Oregon in Klamath Falls. Figure 1 | West Hourly Load by Market – Last 7 Days and Next 7 Days Forecast As the temperatures sink lower, the Northwest is expected to see a ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 30, 2025 | |
| Recently, we’ve discussed how September and October are often volatile months for the SPP market. Seasonal weather patterns, combined with transmission constraints since the maintenance season is here, create conditions where congestion between the North and South hubs tends to intensify. Wind generation (often robust during the shoulder season) can further complicate conditions. More megawatts seek to move where energy is needed just as transmission capacity is limited. Despite the official arrival of fall, late-summer warmth is persisting, with forecasts calling for above-normal temperatures across the region. Figure 1 | SPP Weather Forecast, AG2 Trader Despite mild weather, demand has been stronger this year than in 2023 or 2024. Figure 2 plots average temperatures versus ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 29, 2025 | |
| In summer, power burns stand out as the decisive factor in producing tight gas markets. As we move into fall, the focus shifts from power burns to maintenance schedules. Although outright demand is low, frequent interruptions to supply can easily spark elevated prices. This is especially true with winter just around the corner, and a desire to store away molecules in preparation. Figure 1 | GTN Pipeline Capacity Dashboard (BCF) Our first figure shows the latest maintenance schedule (green), the previous maintenance schedule (red) and flows (blue) for two key points on the GTN pipeline. Kingsgate, on the US/Canada border has an off-and-on schedule with frequent swings between supply squeezes and supply gluts. When flows are unconstrained, we see a few 100 MMcf more of cheap, Canadian gas ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 26, 2025 | |
| Modeling from Energy GPS suggests that a 75% carbon-free WECC grid can be reached with existing technology at a fiscally-reasonable pace of nameplate capacity additions. However, to increase the carbon-free content much above 80% in most regions requires either substantial “clean baseload” resources such as nuclear or geothermal, or alternatively, massive additions of solar plus storage. With the PTC and ITC eliminated by the OBBB, the entire cost will be borne by ratepayers, or non-energy revenue streams such as RECs. The question then becomes, if the grid only becomes X% renewable, what happens to price formation and asset revenue streams? We explored this in a recent Special Report titled Long-Term Forecasts of Solar-to-Storage Ratios. Our latest Special Report used ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 25, 2025 | |
| With warm temperatures still persisting late into September throughout Alberta, the summer is getting a bit of an extension. AESO load has yet to come off from the levels seen earlier in the month, and the current September average hourly profile is holding level with (or even slightly above) that of August for the evening peak. AESO has seen tremendous load growth show up on the grid this summer, such that even without excessive heat the ISO can still feel the pinch, as it has this week. This was not made any easier to manage when the ISO was left on an island heading into last weekend as all four transmission lines into Alberta were derated and brought down to zero volume flowing in and out, a fact that has persisted throughout the week. We first discussed the ... » read more | |