Featured Articles
| Friday Apr 26, 2019 | |
| In December 2018, PacifiCorp released their 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), part of which covered an internal study of the economics of their coal fleet. The conclusions were that many of PacifiCorp’s operating coal plants are un-profitable. In a follow up meeting detailing an updated IRP on April 25, PacifiCorp concluded that an accelerated retirement of some of the Jim Bridger and Naughton coal plant units would produce the greatest gains to ratepayers. Here at EnergyGPS, we believe in leaving no stone unturned, and no hypothesis untested. To verify the conclusions of PacifiCorp, (specifically the Jim Bridger and Naughton coal plants) we need to explore what information is available in the public data sources. To analyze the profitability of PacifiCorp’s coal plants, we ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 25, 2019 | |
| ERCOT is an acronym that stands for Electric Reliability Council of Texas while ORDC stands for the Operating Reserve Demand Curve. The nine letters have been joined at the hip as the former has implemented the latter into its real-time market when the grid becomes tight and it has to lean on its reserves to balance. In one of our recent Newsletter Articles titled 'Changes in ERCOT's Scarcity Pricing', we detailed the impact of the new ORDC rule changes that went into affect this Q1. Over the past couple of days, the alphabet acronym pot started to percolate as the ERCOT real-time market was seeing their net load increase as wind died down and power demand increased. When you tie that in with the fact that we are still in the outage maintenance season, the grid was ripe ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 24, 2019 | |
| If you live on the Eastcoast and are a National Basketball Association (NBA) fan, I hope you had it in you to stay up late to watch the Oklahoma Thunder vs. the Portland Trailblazers game that ended with Damian Lillard hitting a 37 ft. step-back shot at the buzzer for the victory!!!. It was the shot that took him to 50 points for the game and only the 3rd person with a 50 point performance in the playoffs over the past 30 years (Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan). It was also the knockout punch that ended the 7 game series with the Blazers winning 4 games to 1! Figure 1 | Damian's Game Winning Shot - 4/24/2019 If you live in the City of Roses, you know what Damian is capable of doing and the leader he has become. Prior to him becoming the leader, Portland's ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 23, 2019 | |
| Easter weekend not only brought eggs and candy to the Lower 48. It also brought a lot of wind. Wind turbine output pushed towards 50 GWa and combined with the holiday loads took the net load down to just 306 GWa. That is 70 GWa lower than what we are seeing today and one of the lowest net load days we have seen in the past two years. This was led by the South Central region which carries most of the wind capacity across the country. Figure 1 shows just how dramatic the change was for the region's power burn total. Figure 1 | South Central Power Burns It has been a banner month for SPP and ERCOT wind generation. The monthly average for the two combined areas is posting almost 2 GWa higher than this time last year. But typically April and may are the two biggest wind generation ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 22, 2019 | |
| Q2 is the season for RTO assessments of market performance for the prior calendar year. PJM’s market monitor released its report for 2018 a few weeks ago and, by June, we’ll see the 2018 reports for the rest of the U.S. RTOs. This year, I’ll be particularly interested the insights from Team Southwest Power Pool (SPP). Wind energy and its uncertainty associated with its production in the day-ahead time frame has put SPP power prices on a pretty wild ride—a topic that will undoubtedly be addressed in this year’s report. SPP price volatility is easily explained. Growth in wind energy production has been rapid--SPP’s 21.5 GW of installed wind generation now produced over 5 million MWh/mo--almost a quarter of the ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 18, 2019 | |
| Climate goals continue to move forward throughout the Northeast with New York and Massachusetts leading the charge. While Massachusetts has already set generator limits on carbon emissions as we discussed in our previous market flash, New York is still in discussions on how exactly to implement the social cost of carbon. The policies will force fossil fuel based generators to reduce output to keep emissions under the limit. The drop in output will eventually need to be replaced by another source of energy with many policy makers looking towards offshore wind. The New York Governor Cuomo tripled offshore wind capacity target moving from 2.4 GWs to 9 GWs by 2035. Figure 1 | Offshore Wind Farm New York’s lofty goals have put a tailwind behind offshore projects. However, the region ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 17, 2019 | |
| Go Blazers!!!! While I was in college, I followed the Portland Trailblazers as their point guard was no other than Terry Porter who played along side Clyde 'the Glide' Drexler, Buck Williams and Jerome Kersey. This team was really good, the only reason they are not an iconic team is due to the fact that they ran into the Chicago Bulls during their prime years, who just happened to have a player by the name of Michael Jordan. Now that I live in the the City of Roses (Portland), it is like old times as the Portland Blazers have Damian Lillard, who is a perennial all-star surrounded by CJ McCollum and the newly acquired Enos Kanter who has replaced the injured Jusuf Nurkic in the middle. I had the opportunity to go see Game 1 live at the Moda Center on Sunday and it ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 16, 2019 | |
| We have heard a great deal of the associated gas production in the Permian Basin. The jump in natural gas volumes has stripped out the take away capacity leading to a catastrophic drop in cash gas values throughout the Southwest United States. Associated gas production increases are not confined to just the Permian Basin. The Bakken basin in the Dakotas has also seen its boom in volumes. And because it has its own pipeline capacity constraints it is causing a big change in the way Canada is exporting natural gas from Alberta into the Upper Plains. Northern Border Pipeline is a good representation of these issues. Over the past two months production has increased by .2 BCF per day and because that volume has already been utilized by upstream production in Canada the only outcome ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 15, 2019 | |
| Last year at this time, ERCOT's summer months were on everyone's radar screen as the start of the New Year reinforced the fact that the coal retirements throughout the state were going to have an impact on the marginal cost of electricity once the electrical demand kicks in. In fact, we wrote a couple of articles on how the 'Eyes of Texas are upon you all the live long days...' As it turns out, the grid operations were able to manage the system as the implied heat rates in the forward curve were telling every natural gas fired generated to be online. As we got into the actual 'dog days of summer' months, all eyes quickly turned to the wind generation on the grid as Mother Nature would need to step up to keep the real-time markets from venturing into scarcity pricing ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 12, 2019 | |
| It is not uncommon for the key river across the Upper Midwest to flood in the spring time as the snow makes its way down the iron range slopes in Northern Minnesota or the several feet of accumulation that sits in North Dakota near the Red River. If you have every been to Fargo, ND or north to Grand Forks in the spring, it is likely that you have seen the banks of the river overflowing to a point that the both city downtown areas are underwater and everyone is scrambling to try an keep the rising water levels from entering their business or residential dwelling. Figure 1 | Red River Flooding As you makes your way east of Fargo, you start to get into the Mississippi River territory where the added water can be seen causing issues downstream as you start to get into Iowa and ... » read more | |
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