Menu
Featured Articles
| Tuesday Apr 22, 2025 | |
| The recent GCPA Spring 2025 conference in Houston drew hundreds of industry professionals and spotlighted some of the most pressing issues in the ERCOT power market. Our recent article details the key highlights of this conference. The main objective was to discuss where the Texas power grid is headed. While the panels covered everything from regulation to future infrastructure, three hot topics dominated the conversations: the upcoming Real Time Co-optimization plus Batteries (RTC+B) rollout, the struggles facing the Texas Energy Fund (TEF), and booming load growth across the market. Figure 1 | ERCOT West Power Demand vs. El Paso Tempatures Bins The RTC+B initiative, launching in December 2025, marks one of the biggest market design shifts since ERCOT’s nodal market debut. » read more | |
| Monday Apr 21, 2025 | |
| During the winter months, the natural gas market fundamentals take on questions pertaining to the level of heating demand warranted by colder temperatures but now that we are nearly a month into Q2-2025, it is time to look at the other demand sources impacting the grid's balancing equation. Power burns and LNG are the two key sources as they are important for both their magnitude and volatility. This year, both have shown evidence of a structural shift, with one setting record highs and the other looking dangerously low. Figure 1 | LNG Exports (MMCF/Day) Figure 1 shows our estimate of LNG exports, with the current year in blue. The biggest YoY shift came due to the addition of Plaquemines LNG, a new export terminal which ratcheted up total installed capacity. From December to March, this ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 18, 2025 | |
| Koomey's Law Sources: https://www.koomey.com/ https://www.koomey.com/koomey_blog/i-appeared-on-the-shift-key-podcast-on-april-3--2024--talking-about-electricity-used-by-ai-and-ict--with-a-focus-on-load-forecasts/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koomey%27s_law The shiny object in today’s electricity market is load growth. In fact, it’s more than a shiny object – it’s a blinding light which has the undivided attention of every system planner, grid operator, utility CEO, project developer, and energy trader. ERCOT takes the cake for load uncertainty. The historical peak demand record is about 85 GW. Last year ERCOT forecast maximum demand for 2030 around 117 GW. This year the transmission service providers submitted 2030 load forecasts around 205 GW (yes!) and ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 17, 2025 | |
| So far in 2025, ERCOT has established itself as a true rival with CAISO for the title of solar supremacy. ERCOT saw significant gains in solar capacity during the first three months of 2025, reaching a new all-time high for solar potential with 24.2 GW during March. The average hourly solar profile was reaching an average of 18.2 GW during March as well, up nearly 6 GW year-over-year. Just the past couple of days in ERCOT, solar output has topped 24 GW during the middle of the day, pushing past CAISO’s post-curtailment output which hasn’t topped 21 GW yet in April. The impressive solar performance to start out 2025 was not limited to ERCOT, but shared by other markets across the country including PJM, MISO, and yes, CAISO. But with the solar ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 16, 2025 | |
| The beginning of April usually sees a steep ramp up in nuclear outages, but this spring’s outage profile has been bit unique. The figure below is displayed in our NRC Nuclear Plant Summary dashboard and is updated daily. Nuclear outage peaked early this year at the end of March. Total outages reached 21.6 GW on March 29th. Over the following week, several plants wrapped up their regular maintenance and began slowly returning to the grid, along with a couple plants with unplanned maintenance. The result was 7.3 GW back online by April 8th, a dramatic drop in outages during a time when outages usually grow. Figure 1 | Total Nuclear Plant Outage (MW) Outages have since regained some steam and as of yesterday sat just below the 20 GW mark. Many plants are still in the middle of their ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 15, 2025 | |
| The 2024-2025 winter season kicked off with strong market fundamentals, following a summer marked by oversupply. Production remained robust across both Canada and the Lower 48, while weather conditions were relatively moderate—average in Canada and slightly warmer than normal in the U.S. With limited heating demand, gas was injected aggressively into storage. The conversation at the time revolved around AECO’s capacity constraints and how far the price spreads would push storage utilization. By mid-November, AECO storage hit its peak at 468 Bcf. From there, withdrawals began in response to shifting fundamentals. Without any action, the system risked becoming oversaturated given the high starting point. Figure 1 | Alberta Storage Inventory - Daily November’s mild ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 14, 2025 | |
| The start of the second quarter is a time that many natural gas pipelines take on maintenance work as the winter load has faded and the need for molecules is subdued given the power burn numbers are muted now that the renewable penetration volume is seen with both wind and solar present. The West regional pipeline work starts up in British Columbia and ends in the Desert Southwest while California is dealing with weekends of negative pricing that is driving down the power burn numbers across PGAE, Kern and SoCal Gas. Starting with the pipeline maintenance, the West Capacity Dashboard (published daily), details the key pipelines that we monitor across each region and displays the current forecasted capacity, the previous reported volume and the actual flows. Figure 1 | BC Spectra ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 11, 2025 | |
| Donald Trump has issued a few Executive Orders related to the United States energy sector in recent weeks. As with most of Trump’s Executive Orders, it is hard to determine whether they will (a) withstand legal challenges and (b) have the purported impact. Figure 1 | Overreach Executive Orders In our Special Report published yesterday, we discussed the impact of three of the recent Executive Orders: REGULATORY RELIEF FOR CERTAIN STATIONARY SOURCES TO PROMOTE AMERICAN ENERGY, STRENGTHENING THE RELIABILITY AND SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES ELECTRIC GRID, and PROTECTING AMERICAN ENERGY FROM STATE OVERREACH. The last one of these is particularly interesting as it resulted in an immediately-visible market impact. This order is straightforward – the Attorney General must (a) ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 10, 2025 | |
| One week ago, we blogged about the start of spring fish spill in the Pacific Northwest on the hydro system. Each spring on April 3rd, the four dams in the Lower Snake River basin begin allocating a large portion of all flows to spill rather than energy generation, sharply dropping the hourly output. The start of spring spill is followed one week later by another four projects, this time on the Lower Columbia, also transitioning to greater spill. The changes are cutting output from a portion of the system while at the same time overall flows are on the rise, between increased runoff and warmer temperatures prompting snow melt, along with water coming out from storage as Grand Coulee dam at the head of the Upper Columbia is about to start drafting to meet updated ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 9, 2025 | |
| After a brief springtime chill, Alberta temperatures are flipping back above normal for the next couple of weeks. The figure below shows Alberta temperature forecasts weighted by population. Moving from left to right in the figure gives you more recent forecasts for the same day on the y-axis. The end of March and a few days at the beginning of April had average temperatures dropping below 30 degrees F. The coldest day averaged close to 20 degrees F. By this Monday, average temperatures rose by more than 20 degrees, crossing the 50-degree mark. The orange and red coloration, indicating above normal temperatures, is set to extend through the end of the 15-day forecast. The recent warmth, along with high renewable generation, is good timing for the AESO grid as thermal outages are starting ... » read more | |