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| Thursday Jul 13, 2023 | |
| The theme of our Daily Newsletter entries the past several days has been the shift from the remarkably cool temperatures in parts of the country last month to the heat that has just arrived or is about to arrive moving forward. Recent posts have focused on the West, where PG&E and SoCal Gas have benefited from the mild weather and reduced load present in the power grid to make up for lost ground in the race to refill their storage caverns in time for the coming summer’s (and ultimately next winter’s) high load days, and is now facing the arrival of the first major heat event of the summer in CAISO. Focusing on the power piece, CAISO is not the only market in the country that is seeing a major shift from an extended spring in June to the real summer heat and its ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jul 12, 2023 | |
| This June was the hottest on record for global temperatures, so it comes as no surprise that last month had some record-breaking heat in North America. In Texas, the heat rose over the century mark for several days while Canada continued to deal with massive forest fires that spread smoke into the US. However, not every region experienced a heat wave at the end of Q2. A few regions, like California and PJM, were consistently plagued by a blue blob representing below-normal temperatures on the forecasts. In our most recent monthly, titled ‘June Runs Hot and Cold’, we checked in on the regions that ran hot and the ones that faced the cold over the month of June and explored how the weather impacted energy markets across North America. Figure 1 | Alberta Fires and California ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jul 11, 2023 | |
| The weather forecast has California, specifically the LA Basin, warming up over the course of the next week. This will be the first big heat event of the summer months, thus stirring the pot when it comes to finding megawatts to balance the system. Figure 1 | CAISO Peak Power Demand Forecast The graph above displays the CAISO peak demand (both actuals and forecast) in the left pane while the line graphs to the right represent the three key demand regions with the CAISO footprint. What sticks out looking at the blue bars is the bulge coming up at the end of the week as each day tops the level seen last week and the 17th has a step function higher compared to the other stout days. The key to the uptick is the simple fact that all three sub-regions are displaying an uptick in ... » read more | |
| Monday Jul 10, 2023 | |
| The South Central has been warm since the middle of June as Mother Nature has delivered temperatures that get wrapped around the latest phrase known as a ‘heat dome’. This is when a high-pressure system gets locked over a region for a longer period of time and the daytime highs are well-above normal where the cumulative days start to bring on misery and discomfort. This has led to the ERCOT peak power demand numbers to reach as high as 84.7 GW, which is quite strong when you consider a few years ago the discussion was about the region’s power demand now topping 75 GW. The good news is that renewable penetration has been plentiful throughout the power demand increase mentioned; thus resulting in comfort when both wind and solar show up. Figure 1 | ... » read more | |
| Friday Jul 7, 2023 | |
| The 4th of July has come and gone with some states outlawing every form of over-the-counter fireworks while other states allow pop-up shops to be on display at every corner with lines out the tents as the loyal holiday party goers have plans to make the event last the entire day. Figure 1 | 4th of July – Fireworks or Not? The hardcore 4th of July firework participants might feel a little cheated as this year’s holiday fell on Tuesday, which does not really allow for the prior/post days to extend the mini-firework displays or multiple block parties that usually end with fireworks in the middle of the street. It will be a few years before the festivities mentioned can take on multiple days in the states that still allow for such. In the energy sector, entities will not ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jul 6, 2023 | |
| Solar in ERCOT continues to grow, with each month’s average generation profile topping the same month from the prior year, which itself was greater than the profile from the year before that. Figure 1 | ERCOT Monthly and Hourly Average Solar and Wind Profiles, 2021 – Present In the figure above, ERCOT system-wide wind and solar generation is averaged by month and hour to get to a “typical day” profile for each month. Different colors indicate different years; 2023 is red. So far this year, every month of 2023 has had more solar generation than the same month in the prior year. While some of the winter months have been close to the same (not much new solar is installed in the winter), the summer months have blown last year out of the water. Our next ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jul 5, 2023 | |
| With the start of summer and Independence Day behind us, the prime time for nuclear outages is also up. Nuclear operators need to perform important maintenance once every year and a half or two years. They schedule going offline during the times when load is lowest during spring and fall. As summer heat starts to build, the grid needs the baseload energy from the nuclear plants. In the last week, the final nuclear plant with scheduled refueling this spring started to return online. Let’s look back on how the spring 2023 nuclear outage season measured up. Figure 1 | Total US Nuclear Outages in Megawatts with Forecast (2021 – 2023) The nuclear outages were off to an early start compared to 2022, surpassing 10 GW in the middle of February. By the time April rolled around, growth ... » read more | |
| Monday Jul 3, 2023 | |
| The sun is shining on the Golden State, which is evident by the current solar generation that works its way onto the grid via behind the meter and utility-scaled resources known as solar farms. The growth has been impressive for years as the state implemented a Renewable Portfolio Standard more than a decade ago, to which the local load serving entities have been meeting their targets via the sun’s rays. Figure 1 | CAISO Utility-Scaled Solar/Wind Generation The solar owners really like it when the other resources play in their sandbox as it means less curtailments within a given day. The chart in Figure 1 displays the last seven days of the CAISO solar and wind generation during the midday block of hours. The top pane is tied to the former while the bottom pane ... » read more | |
| Friday Jun 30, 2023 | |
| A flurry of recent EGPS articles discussing battery storage in CAISO and ERCOT (High Dispatch, Low Reward, The Battery Squeeze, and Market Flash: Dome it is: ERCOT Heat!) has me reflecting on batteries, not just within the electric-power industry, but in my everyday world. Whether I’m doing home repair jobs with battery-powered tools, watching my kids whiz around on their hoverboards, or looking up recipes on my phone, I am continually astounded by the energy density and value that Lithium-Ion batteries provide. Battery-powered mobility has eclipsed cars and golf carts to include bikes, motorcycles, one wheels, skateboards, watercraft, not to mention wheelchairs that seemingly keep up with the pace of traffic, which I’m looking forward to someday. See Figure 1 below. Within ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jun 29, 2023 | |
| The month of June has helped SoCal Gas make up significant ground replenishing its gas storage. At the start of the month, SoCal Gas was looking at the need to put about 0.2 BCF into the ground each day over the summer in order to refill to full by the end of November. In the intervening four weeks they have been way ahead of the mark, averaging nearly 0.5 BCF per day into storage. After adding just 7.2 BCF to storage over the month of May, the month of June has seen SoCal’s caverns receive over 13.5 BCF of additional gas. Part of the story has been SoCal Citygate pricing over PG&E Citygate to incentivize power burns to move out of SoCal’s system and up to the North, but the heart of this pattern has been the very low demand numbers over the course ... » read more | |