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| Wednesday Mar 27, 2024 | |
| Two weeks ago in this blog, we wrote about the nuclear outages during spring maintenance season lagging behind previous years. However, our nuclear outage forecast had the outage total springing up in the last half of March which is exactly what we’ve seen. The figure below is featured in our daily NRC Nuclear Plant Summary report and shows outage levels year-on-year back to 2019 as well as our estimated forecast line. Note our forecast line only includes planned refueling outages and current unplanned outages. When we wrote our last blog, this year’s outages came in below 2022 and 2023 levels by more than 4 GW. As of March 26th, this year leads 2022 by 2.5 GW and last year by more than 4 GW. Yesterday’s total nuclear outages surpassed 16.7 GW with a peak expected later ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 25, 2024 | |
| The slogan ‘Message in a Bottle’ came about by someone placing a message they wrote into a container that was shaped like a bottle where it was sealed and throwing into the water. The goal was for the natural currents to take the message to far away parts with the hope that someone would find it, open the container, and read the message. In 1999, the slogan was made into a romantic film starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright-Penn where a writer (Theresa-Robin) falls in love with a shipbuilder (Garrett – Kevin) after finding a bottle with letters in them on the sandy beaches of Cape Cod. Figure 1 | Message/Winter in a Bottle The last week of March 2024 does not entail a romantic love story if you reside in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic or the Northeast as Mother ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 22, 2024 | |
| The Easter Bunny will be hiding all the eggs here soon where the little ones will be running around the backyard with their decorative baskets looking for the treasures inside. Many times it is their favorite candy while some of the eggs, when opened carry with them coins or dollar bills. Figure 1 | Easter Egg Baskets There are times during the gathering of eggs where parents need to get involved due to the age of the children as the older ones are racing around grabbing everything in sight while the younger one’s basket is nearly empty. The parent’s understand that if ‘all the eggs are in one basket’, it will end up with some sadness on a day that is suppose to bring joy to everyone as it officially kicks off spring. A safer bet is ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 21, 2024 | |
| The ERCOT market continues to present opportunities for flexible generation such as peakers and the newly minted battery fleet. This was evident during the summer months when power demand was breaking records all the while the wind/solar generation was eating away at the midday net load volume. The discussions around adding peakers is being addressed and spoken at every conference while the battery technology continue to see the costs unwind and the processing of getting capacity to the grid a focal point by all. Figure 1 | ERCOT Battery Fleet – Hourly Profile Summary We track the ERCOT battery fleet economic and revenue streams in the ERCOT Daily Dashboard (sample) that is part of the EnergyGPS eCommerce Platinum Plus Package we offer to interested parties via our ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 20, 2024 | |
| In California, SP15 batteries have benefited from the transmission constraints that have been in play since Fall 2023 while NP15’s fleet has been on the other side of things leading into March 2024. We covered it most recently in ‘More Good News for SP15 Batteries’. The tide started to turn this past weekend. Northern California’s battery fleet rejoiced as the NP15 batteries’ arbitrage opportunity outpaced that of Southern California for the first time this year as Sunday’s (17th) saw price drop down $65 consistently during the midday period while bouncing up to the low $40 level during the evening ramp period. In our most recent article, ‘Northern Battery Light’, we examine the good news for NP15 batteries. Read on for a sneak peek. Figure ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 19, 2024 | |
| The Texas market has some interesting things going on within the power and natural gas space the past couple of weeks as Mother Nature swings temperatures while West Texas has a glut of natural gas molecules which ultimately have prices settling in negative territory. In between all of this is the power sector where volatile wind is in play, growing solar and increased outages now that half of March is in the books. Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Breakdown Each of the elements mentioned are covered in the EnergyGPS South Central Package, which is a subset to the North American Power and Natural Enterprise Market Fundamental Product Offering we offer to entities in the energy space. Last week, Houston Shipchannel saw its previous low cash settle broken by settling in at $1.08 only ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 18, 2024 | |
| Transition creates volatility in the energy sector, especially power as regions tied to large quantities of wind capacity can see their respective hourly balancing equation to be turned upside down depending on what Mother Nature provides. We have seen this unfold across Texas, SPP and the Midwest ISO region with the North Zone displaying the latest price action saw the Minn Hub heavy load settle $9.32 on Sunday which is rich compared to the $1.50 average price posed for Saturday (March 16th). The impact of the renewable components was detailed in the latest EnergyGPS special report (titled | MISO Soup - Renewable Ingredients), which is part of the eCommerce Platinum/Platinum Plus packages we offer to interested parties in the energy space. Figure 1 | MISO North Zone Net ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 15, 2024 | |
| For the last several years we’ve seen signs of tightening throughout Western electricity markets. CAISO experienced rolling blackouts in 2020. The January 2024 winter storm triggered multiple energy emergency alerts across the Pacific Northwest. Cash markets have experienced price spikes with increasing frequency. These and other reliability concerns have helped pave the way for a regional resource adequacy program called the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP). The WRAP will create a methodology for determining resource adequacy need as well as for accrediting supply. This methodology will be used to determine whether WRAP members have met their RA compliance obligations through a forward showing process. While the WRAP will not create a market for RA via a market ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 14, 2024 | |
| The presence of oversupply in Southern California during the middle of the day is nothing new. The robust solar capacity present in the region means that curtailments are a fact of business in SP15, and this past week is no exception. For the past six days, solar curtailments have averaged over 1 GW, climbing to over 3 GW on the 8th and 9th. In CAISO, the oversupply issue has grown more and more severe each month since December, reaching unprecedented levels so far in March. Total solar curtailments averaged 1.4 GW (and 81%) higher in January of this year than in January 2023, 609 MW higher in February, and 3.7 GW (20%) higher through the first 12 days of March. Figure 1 | CAISO Daily Average Curtailment MWh by Month We’ve written about the challenges ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 13, 2024 | |
| The spring maintenance for nuclear plants is trailing behind previous years. As of Tuesday, March 12th, the total amount of US nuclear outages stands at just 10 GW. That’s down 2.1 GW from the week before and more than 4 GW behind outages on the same day in both 2023 and 2022. The figure below is featured in our daily NRC Nuclear Plant Summary report. The dotted black line shows our forecast for outages which includes upcoming refueling cycles, as well as estimated outage end dates for plants currently partially or fully offline. While outages are down slightly this week as the first round of spring refueling winds down, we expect the second half of March to bring outages much closer to previous years’ levels. Figure 1 | Total Nuclear Plant Outages (MW) As of yesterday, there ... » read more | |