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| Friday Jun 5, 2026 | |
| The late spring/early summer season in Texas can be a period of volatility when it comes to the weather. Often, the rainiest times of the year can occur in May or June. Rainfall has been occurring over various parts of the region yesterday and today, and more rain is in the forecast for the coming few days: Figure 1 | Weather Forecast for Texas Cities The rain and associated cloudy weather can have a meaningful impact on ERCOT's generation stack. Over the past few years, peak midday solar output has doubled or tripled (depending on which month you look at), and it's easy to find hours where solar is the largest single component of the supply stack. Figure 2 | ERCOT Average Hourly Supply Stack, 2026 YTD The figure above shows ERCOT's average supply stack, by hour, for 2026 so far. » read more | |
| Thursday Jun 4, 2026 | |
| A couple of weeks ago our blog post touched on the surging renewable curtailments that have been present within CAISO over the past month. Solar expansion has continued at a strong rate so far in 2026, the hourly profile pushing higher in May to reach a new high for the midday with potential generation during hour ending 13 averaging 22.6 GW and increase of over 2 GW year-over-year. The situation has been further exacerbated by surging solar in the Desert Southwest and an improved water year for Pacific Northwest hydro that is leaving plenty of supply available at the interties in the middle of the day and no demand externally for CAISO’s excess solar generation. The hope that storage would be able to mitigate the worst of the midday oversupply issues has dimmed, at least for the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jun 3, 2026 | |
| In last Wednesday’s blog, we broke down some of the key factors in the perfect storm that resulted in AESO calling an energy emergency on Monday, May 25th. Those factors included low wind generation, high temperatures and demand, along with a high level of thermal outages. No more emergencies were called last week, but pool prices exceeded $980/MWh for several hours on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Many of the same factors persisted during these periods. On Friday, wind generation returned to average over 2 GW. Despite a new record level of demand for May at 11.5 GW, pool prices averaged under $30/MWh for the day. On Sunday, wind generation rose while demand fell and pool prices spent the day at the price floor of $0/MWh. Figure 1 | AESO Market Summary (May 25 – 31 ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jun 2, 2026 | |
| Western Canadian natural gas markets are behaving differently this spring than what market participants have become accustomed to over the past years. Shoulder season is typically associated with ample supply, strong storage injections, and weaker cash pricing as production outpaces demand. This year, however, Alberta balances have carried a noticeably firmer tone. Lower Nova receipts resulting from NGTL maintenance activity have reduced available supply across the system, while export demand has remained relatively resilient. The result has been a more balanced market structure than is normally observed during the spring injection season. Figure 1 | Alberta Daily Demand and Supply Components The shift is evident across several key market fundamentals. Nova receipts have trended lower ... » read more | |
| Monday Jun 1, 2026 | |
| The natural gas world has seen its prompt month move up $0.40 since the Memorial Day weekend, which translates to a $3.33 value heading into June. There are many factors that play into the volatility in the forward commodity curves with the front tied mostly to market fundamentals and global news such as the Middle East conflict that has its current state tied to negotiations around a resolution. Figure 1 | Nymex Prompt Month Settle Price – Last 75 Days Part of the $0.40 move upward was the simple fact that the July contract was valued higher than the June contract that rolled off. This makes sense as for the former is part of Q3 while the latter is locked as the final month of Q2. Other factors that played a role in the uptick are tied to the weather forecast and what is ... » read more | |
| Friday May 29, 2026 | |
| The Energy Information Administration (EIA) releases a monthly report of capacity in a report titled “Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory” with data on operating, planned, and retired capacity by generator in the U.S. The latest release was on May 21st, 2026 covering reported capacity through April 2026. We use these data as an input into our long-term Production Cost Model (PCM), supplementing them with independent research to account for timing adjustments, project delays, cancellations, and other known data gaps. Along with our demand forecasts, this dataset helps assess whether regions are becoming long or short in energy and capacity. As a broader trend in the WECC, capacity additions have been hitting records in the last few years particularly in ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 28, 2026 | |
| The Pacific Northwest is currently enjoying some late May warmth that has been building throughout the region for the past several days. The high temperatures started up in Canada (the heat in Alberta contributing to the shortfalls in AESO were the topic of yesterday’s blog) and have moved south and west; Portland is expected to see highs top 80 degrees while over in northern Idaho and western Montana the thermometer should reach 90, and the heat hang around for another couple of days. This heat is being accompanied by something else that has been relatively scarce so far in May for the region—rain. The month to date has experienced dry conditions, shown by the left-hand image in the figure below, which is taken from the Northwest River Forecast Center and shows MTD ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 27, 2026 | |
| The events leading up to Monday night’s emergency alert in AESO were a perfect storm. First, thermal outages began to escalate. Cascade Unit 2 went offline last Friday night followed by Sheerness Unit 2. On Saturday, two more units went offline, and thermal outages were over 4.5 GW. By Monday, over 4.2 GW remained offline. Temperatures also escalated over the weekend with highs near 77 degrees F on Monday in Calgary. This pushed demand levels up higher than expected. The peak in HE 18 came in over 10.7 GW, about 0.1 GW higher than the forecast. The biggest swing leaving the grid short came from wind generation, which came in much lower than expected on Monday evening. Net load ultimately peaked at 9.9 GW, a gigawatt higher than the forecasts showed on Monday morning. Figure 1 | AESO ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 26, 2026 | |
| The relationship between carbon pricing and power markets across the Northeast is becoming increasingly difficult to separate, especially as elevated heat rates continue to emerge in both NYISO and ISONE. In our recent special report titled “There’s Carbon in my Heat Rate!” we discussed what once appeared to be straightforward energy pricing is now being heavily shaped by emissions compliance costs, tighter supply conditions, and structural changes to the regional generation fleet. As these factors become more intertwined, market participants are being forced to rethink how they interpret heat rates and forward power valuations heading into the summer of 2026. Figure 1 | NYC July HE17-20 Heat Rates versus NYISO Load In New York, summer evening heat rates have risen ... » read more | |
| Friday May 22, 2026 | |
| Over the past six months, the much anticipated energizing of the Sun Zia transmission line has been a conversation piece for both the near term market fundamentals, along with the longer term Production Cost Modeling (PCM) we do here at Energy GPS. The former impacts price immediately while the latter kick starts the thought process of how megawatt flows, curtailments and load growth not only play into the addition of Sun Zia but other transmission lines that are in the queue to come online in the coming years. Figure 1 | New Transmission in Play via New Mexico Wind Focusing on the near-term impacts in this blog, we saw the Sun Zia transmission line enter testing mode by CAISO delivering a note back in Fall 2025 that a node has been added specifically for megawatts traveling from New ... » read more | |