Featured Articles
| Friday Dec 16, 2016 | |
| I was recently discussing long term California power markets with a client. The conversation turned to the potential for negative prices. When talking to renewable developers the conversation often goes as follows: Client: “Real time prices can go negative, but you don’t expect that day ahead prices will go negative too, do you?” EnergyGPS: “Um … day ahead prices have been negative already and we expect the frequency to increase in the future.” Client: “Ok, but that will just be an anomaly, day ahead prices won’t be ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 15, 2016 | |
| Last December was such an anomaly as the temperatures were so mild across the entire continent. This led to well below normal rescom demand in the Midwest and Eastern parts of the country to a poitn that the price of natural gas took a big nose-dive. The big shift down in the cash market/forward curve moved the natural gas fired generation lower in the supply stack in many regions (below that of coal), including PJM. As a result, we saw more power burns via natural gas than that of coal fired generators. Once we got into January, that changed as some ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 14, 2016 | |
| The Midwest and East Coast are preparing themselves for a serious cold shot this weekend as the "Polar Vortex" meanders south and drops sub-freezing arctic air across the continental US. Temperatures are forecasted to decline the remainder of the week with the coldest weather expected to hit Friday. High temperatures are not expected to break 20 degrees in Boston for Friday while NYC sees a high of only 25 degrees. Figure 1 | NOAA Northeast High Temperatures Maps – Dec 15th & Dec 16th As is typically the case, the freezing ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 13, 2016 | |
| The drop in temperatures across Western Canada and the Rockies has had a big effect on Canadian and US production since the beginning of the month. Overall production across the Lower 48 is down .6 BCF and Canadian production is down 1 BCF. This is largely caused by freeze offs occurring on the well heads The weather event unfolding in the west is some of the coldest weather we have seen in three years. Figure 1 | Current Weather Map These freeze off events are a common occurrence when the temperatures dip below freezing in many of the production areas ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 12, 2016 | |
| Its seems like forever since we have seen a deep purple color hovering over the southern portion of Canada and the northern portion of the Lower 48. About the middle of last week, we started to see temperatures drop in the Midwest and Northeast portion of the United States while Calgary, AB saw its temperatures drop over 20 degrees below normal. The Pacific Northwest joined in on the party on Thursday and Friday and 1-2 inches of snow covered the Portland metro area and freezing temperatures gave the kids a 4 day weekend (school cancelled for two ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 9, 2016 | |
| As a consultant who works on a lot of power transactions, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas can be quite volatile. During some years this is a quiet time where you can tie up a bunch of loose ends and get organized for the upcoming year. In other years it can be very busy as clients are trying to close deals before the end of the year and require support in this effort. With a large proportion of EnergyGPS’ work coming from the renewable sector, how busy we are at the end of the year is one small indicator of the health of the industry. As far as we ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 8, 2016 | |
| Over the past few years, a lot of the buzz in California centered around the increasing solar profile as it was the renewable energy of choice by developers that are chasing the state's RPS mandate. This has led to the year on year capacity increase with in the CAISO footprint. Figure 1 | CAISO Solar Output - Year on Year Comparison/Super Peak Average As you can see in Figure 1, as the daylight hours start to get shorter in the Fall, the overall output tapers off starting in the middle of September and carries on through January. What we have noticed this ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 7, 2016 | |
| When it comes to what is happening up in Alberta, there are are so many components to look at. I thought it would be good to break down a few in this newsletter. All this is covered in our Canadian Natural Gas package, where we send out daily reports on the supply/demand, weekly macro views and monthly balance forecasts through the next two terms on the calendar. If you would like to know more about this package and how you can subscribe, please email us at info@energygps.com. Ever since October, Mother Nature has been keeping the demand on its toes as ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 6, 2016 | |
| When I was packing last Friday night for my journey to Lambeau Field for the Packers - Texans game, little did I know I would be needing all that warm gear once I landed back in Portland last night. In fact, when we took off out of Milwaukee's Mitchell Airport is was a balmy 36 degrees with a slight wind. When we landed in Minneapolis the temperatures climbed to 39 degrees with little snow on the ground. As we were landing in Portland last night around 7:30, the pilot got on the phone prior to landing and stated the temperatures at the airport was 32 ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 5, 2016 | |
| This is the time of year when we start to focus on winter weather and the effect on demand. While during the summer, that demand is a measure of electric cooling load, winter demand shifts to space heating particularly in the Residential-Commercial sector of the economy. This becomes the most important measure of natural gas consumption because of the direct correlation between changes in temperature and the thermostat setting for your average household furnace. This is unlike the electric load that must be served by the power grid during the summer. There are many ... » read more | |
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