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| Thursday Jan 18, 2024 | |
| Over the past week the hydro system in the Pacific Northwest was put to the test given the frigid weather conditions across the country but especially here in the PNW, where the cold brought demand up to record levels across the region. The situation was exacerbated by the disruption at the Jackson Prairie facility on Saturday that gave everyone a scare as the grid was relying on gas generation operating at full capacity with the other constraints in place—namely the derates on the transmission lines, cold sitting heavily over BC, Alberta, and the Rockies, and the conditions at play in the hydro system. The talk at last week’s TMT surrounding the coming cold was the plan to attempt to maintain Grand Coulee dam releases at minimum required levels to support the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 17, 2024 | |
| Over the course of four days, AESO called a series of four emergency alerts with the first coming on Friday evening and the last on Monday morning. AESO was narrowly able to avoid rolling blackouts but did send out notices to Albertans to conserve power where possible. Conditions over the weekend created the perfect storm as demand was high with bone-chilling cold, transmission was limited, and renewables were out of the picture. The figure below shows a snippet of AESO’s event log from the weekend. The emergency alert level 3, depicted twice, is the highest level of emergency alert while the EEA0 represents when the emergency event is over. Figure 1 | Snippet of AIES Event Log from this Weekend (aeso.ca) The cold started last week with average temperatures well below 0 degrees F ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 16, 2024 | |
| The long weekend was filled with cold weather across North America with the initial blast working through the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies. By Saturday night, the Midwest was joining in on the party. If you watched any of the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Miami Dolphins football game in Kansas City, the temperature at kickoff speaks for itself. The game was the 4th coldest game ever played, which is another indication of the extreme cold front in play. By the time Sunday rolled around, the Dallas Cowboy vs. Green Bay Packer football fans were glad the game was indoors as the Dallas temperatures were plummeting to the lower 20’s as a high. This culminated to the coldest stretch of days since Storm Uri as Monday morning saw wind chill adjusted temperatures ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 12, 2024 | |
| The generation fleet in the WECC is steadily changing with the retirement of coal plants and once-through-cooling (OTC) natural gas plants coupled with the addition of solar, wind, and storage facilities. The pace of this change will impact just about every energy-related commodity in the WECC. Coal retirements are immediately replaced with higher natural gas generation. Renewable additions will chip away at gas market share and demand for natural gas. If renewable generation can’t be built in time to meet the regulatory deadlines, it will put upward pressure on REC and carbon prices. Energy and capacity prices will obviously be impacted by this evolving supply and demand. In 2022 Energy GPS prepared a study for the Northwest River Partners titled “Lower Snake River Dams Power ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 11, 2024 | |
| The Pacific Northwest is the foremost market to watch in the West as the current cold weather pattern descends up on the United States. With Mid-C trading over $900 for today and things only getting tighter in the coming days, the PNW is where the action is. The Northwest also hosts the latest newcomer to the carbon reduction game with the Washington State Carbon Program now into its second year of existence. In our latest Newsletter Special Report, “Meet in the Middle”, we delve into the evolution of the program and market fundamentals at play in the Northwest behind it, starting with PNW hydro. The market fundamentals are tied to the electricity, transportation, and industrial sector where the first part of 2023 was displaying a price signal that matched up ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 10, 2024 | |
| As much of the country prepares for snow flurries in the skies, EnergyGPS has been preparing a flurry of content to keep our subscribers up to date on how the coming winter weather will impact markets across the nation. Yesterday, we released market flashes for several regions, including ERCOT, the Pacific Northwest, and Alberta, with the most pertinent and up-to-date analysis on the impact the upcoming cold will have on the relevant natural gas and power markets. We also released an article, titled ‘Deep Purple, Not the Band’, which covers the potential for freeze-offs in West Texas. This article and others like it are available to those who have purchased our Newsletter Gold, Platinum, or Platinum Plus packages. In today’s blog, we’ll offer a tasting of the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 9, 2024 | |
| The coldest weather of the winter is solidifying across North America and with that comes a little chaos in the energy space starting with natural gas and ending with the power sector. The former is tethered to heating demand across the northern portion of the continent where the focus is on the rescom component in each region and the temperatures bringing the production regions closer to freeze-off levels. The latter has its own demand component that shows up in hourly increments with the morning and evening ramp periods have steep inclines as everyone is waking up and getting home from work where a cozy warm couch is warranted while the electric vehicle is charging, and the electric stove is warming up dinner. Figure 1 | Winter is Upon Us We have discussed the ... » read more | |
| Monday Jan 8, 2024 | |
| The National Football League (NFL) regular season came to an end yesterday with certain games mattering more than others when it came to who was in the playoffs and what seed each team will be. For me, it was the last Sunday of the year where I get a glimpse of the weather conditions across a wide range of cities/regions now that winter is upon us. If you have been following the markets as of late, Mother Nature is finally delivering colder temperatures across North America in the 15-day forecast along with the first real snowfall in the upper regions such as the Rockies, Upper Midwest and Northeast. Figure 1 | Atmospheric G2 6-10 Day Weather Forecast The graph above displays the 6-10 day model runs as of this morning while Sunday’s NFL games displayed what was happening on the ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 5, 2024 | |
| Back on October 22nd, ERCOT experienced a highly unusual software failure. Figure 1 | Snip from ERCOT Presentation for Reliability and Markets Committee Meeting The software issue led, eventually, to prices across the system rising to almost $3500 per MWh during the middle of an otherwise moderately-priced day. The graph below shows the hourly average real time prices at the ERCOT North Hub, from 10/21/23 through 10/23/23. The spike in the middle of the graph is the price that resulted from the software error. Figure 2 | ERCOT North Hub RT Prices, 10/21/23 – 10/23/23 ERCOT has provisions for making corrections to real time prices under normal circumstances. Real time prices aren’t considered finalized until several days after they’re originally published, and ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 4, 2024 | |
| The New Year does not come about without the previous year coming to an end. With that comes several of our monthly dashboards (CAISO and ERCOT Battery) along with the Monthly Energy Recap and Renewable Monthly reports, which are all a part of the EnergyGPS Platinum Plus eCommerce product offering. If you would like to track the supply/demand balancing act on a daily or weekly basis and dive into the market fundamentals, the EnergyGPS North American Power and Natural Gas Enterprise Product Offering is something to consider. The content below highlights some of the insight delivered within the Renewable Monthly Report, which the latest was published yesterday. Figure 1 | NP15 and SP15 Solar Capture Ratio CAISO’s poor solar performance deepened in the ... » read more | |