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| Monday Aug 25, 2025 | |
| Towards the end of last week, Mother Nature delivered the most extreme conditions of the summer to date to the CAISO grid. Friday afternoon saw Los Angles hit a high of 94 and neighboring Phoenix up to 110 degrees. For coastal California, this was something of a shock to the system after a comparatively mild summer. Off the coast temperatures were well below their all-time high but extreme for this late in the season. In this blog we dive into the response from power markets and how they coped with the heat. Figure 1 | CAISO Net Load Actuals & Forecast (MW) The figure above shows CAISO’s hourly profile for load, net load, solar, and wind generation. The end of last week put the greatest demand on the grid yet this year, with load in excess of 42 GWs. The greatest hurdle for the ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 22, 2025 | |
| Here at Energy GPS, we commit a lot of effort to understanding and explaining the buildout of generation and storage resources in ERCOT. Just this past week we published articles including “Everything is Bigger in Texas” highlighting solar and battery past and forecast growth, and “ERCOT Win(d)less Streak” noting the diminished wind profile forecast in the upcoming days. (This second article should get a special shoutout for its notable pun and wordplay in its title.) But while developers bring on new resources to meet a growing demand, large customers can make less dramatic actions that bring about a similar goal of balancing the grid. Specifically, they can adjust or curtail operations to minimize demand during the highest demand ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 21, 2025 | |
| In the energy space, Texas is known for its rich oil fields and natural gas infrastructure, where some of the largest pipelines have been built to move volume from West Texas and the Panhandle to demand regions such as the Desert Southwest, California and the eastern side of the state. Over the past couple of decades, the Lone Star State has entered the renewable energy space in a major way by adding wind and solar farms, along with flexible battery capacity to a point that Texas renewables rival any market in the country. The regional landscape was ripe for wind turbines to be placed in West Texas with an easy transition into ERCOT’s North and South regions as the technology and understanding of wind patterns evolved. The sun was the next resource to start harvesting as the supply ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Aug 20, 2025 | |
| Temperatures in Alberta this summer have mostly come in below normal with only pockets of heat. The figure below shows actual average Alberta temperatures, as well as the difference from normal. Orange shows above-normal temperatures while blue shows below-normal temperatures. The last two weekends were hot spots with highs over 80 degrees F. With the heat has come extra demand, surpassing forecasts and causing real-time price volatility. Figure 1 | Average Alberta Temperatures and Differences from Normal (Jul – Aug 2025) The heat this summer has been sporadic, a welcome relief after last summer’s relentless heat and wildfires. The figure plots average Alberta load against average Calgary temperatures in July and August going back to 2023. This year’s data is in ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Aug 19, 2025 | |
| One story we continue to tune into this summer is that of CAISO’s battery fleet. All signs pointed to strong capacity growth at the onset of summer, and now tight conditions have brought us another round of records. Unlike other resources, batteries act at times like an electricity sink and at others as a source of supply. So, there are two new records to watch out for, one in the midday charging hours and another in the peak of the evening ramp. Figure 1 | Record Battery Charge and Output Over Time Our first figure shows two related records for CAISO’s battery fleet: hourly output and daily charge. The blue line above shows the maximum value for MWs taken off the grid in a single day at any given date. The orange line shows record battery output in a single hour over time. » read more | |
| Monday Aug 18, 2025 | |
| The next round of heat across the Lower 48 does not include the Midwest, Ohio Valley or the Northeast as the recent 15-day temperature forecast pulled back the CDD levels. This is the coolest period of the summer, which means that the Lower 48 power burn component will shift lower given such a move. Out West, Mother Nature is delivering a different storyline as it is the only region holding onto summer as temperatures look to warm starting midweek and escalating to its highs by Friday/Saturday. Figure 1 | CAISO Peak Demand Breakdown The escalating pattern can be seen in the figure above, which represents the CAISO peak demand numbers for the past week and what lies ahead over the next 7 days outright and by the three major balancing regions. Looking at the forecasts for Sacramento, the ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 15, 2025 | |
| Since the passage of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) we've seen many experts, amateurs, pundits, and charlatans predict the consequences on the energy sector. It seems like a pretty good bet that installations of solar and wind will decline once the tax credits go away. People can certainly debate how many fewer GW will be built. We've also heard that retail rates will move higher. This makes sense -- load serving entities who purchase wind and solar once the tax credits have expired will pay more and that extra cost will be passed through to ratepayers. Again, reasonable people can debate the magnitude. People in the media and on my LinkedIn feed were slinging numbers around like drunken cowboys. Many of the articles and posts that I saw conflated wholesale energy prices and retail ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 14, 2025 | |
| After several swelteringly hot days this week, those of us in Portland are looking forward to the cooling action taking place and a shift down from hot and sweaty to pleasantly warm. Some of the Pacific Northwest remains ensconced in heat but west of the Cascades temperatures are already moderating and should cool further to close out the week. The latest blast of hot weather brought with it the highest temperatures going back through the start of July this summer, where the focus has been squarely on the PNW in the west as California has seen largely below-average temperatures thus far. The figure below plots daily CDDs by region since July 1, along with forecasted CDDs for the coming 15 days. The panes for CA and SP15 (for SoCal specifically) are colored blue for ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Aug 13, 2025 | |
| Mother Nature’s outlook for the balance of August 2025 is starting to form how energy traders are looking at the natural gas landscape as the prompt month forward curve slipped down to $2.80 for Tuesday’s close. Figure 1 | ConUS CDD/HDD Forecast vs. Last Year and Normal – by 5-Day Period (AG2) The figure above illustrates how the 15-day temperature forecast (blue) is shaping up compared to the previous run (red dotted), last year for the same days (gold) and what is considered normal (downward trending gray line). What is clear is that the current heat will last through the weekend before we see a big shift lower and transitioning to the last 10 days of the month attracts modest temperatures spreading across the country. If this pattern holds and extends into the start ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Aug 12, 2025 | |
| Western Canada’s natural gas market continues to grapple with constrained takeaway capacity, which has intensified existing oversupply conditions. Two major pipelines carrying gas from Alberta and British Columbia are currently operating below normal limits. On the GTN system, Kingsgate capacity was cut in late July to 2.39 Bcf/d and further reduced to 2.14 Bcf/d on August 12, where it will remain for the rest of the month. Meanwhile, capacity at BC Spectra’s Station 14 dropped to 1.55 Bcf/d in late July and held until August 9, before edging up to 1.70 Bcf/d. These constraints limit the region’s ability to move gas to markets where demand is stronger. Figure 1 | NGI Cash Prices: AECO hub and West Coast Station 2, 2024-Present With abundant supply and limited demand ... » read more | |