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| Thursday Jun 25, 2026 | |
| A week ago we wrote up the first leg of the seasonal spill transition as the four Lower Columbia projects flipped from spring to summer fish spill operations on the 16th. This past Sunday, the 21st, the second leg arrived: the four Lower Snake dams — Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Lower Granite — made the same switch, putting the entire lower system fully into summer spill. As our latest PNW Hydro Discussion framed it, the system is now "full into summer," with Grand Coulee's June refill nearly complete and a round of heat set to give way to cooler temperatures by the weekend. The Lower Snake switch played out differently than the Lower Columbia's, though. Figure 1 plots hourly generation and spill (kcfs) at the four LS projects over the past two weeks, with ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jun 24, 2026 | |
| Early June delivered a one-two punch to the Midwest grid. A sustained heat wave drove temperatures above seasonal norms and pushed MISO demand toward levels not seen since winter. Then a line of severe storms tore through the region just as the system was under its greatest strain. The collision of sudden loss of power in some areas and a flood of wind generation in others set off dramatic price swings in the real-time energy market that pushed key hubs to extremes. Figure 1 | Average Midwest Temperatures and Differences from Normal (May – June 2026) Figure 1 shows daily average Midwest temperatures from the start of May through June 18th. The top panel plots the daily average in degrees Fahrenheit, with orange bars marking days that ran above normal and blue bars marking those ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jun 23, 2026 | |
| If there has been one defining theme across the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) this June, it is the remarkable strength of wind generation. While electricity demand has followed a typical early-summer pattern, wind output has consistently exceeded expectations, becoming the dominant factor shaping market conditions across the region. Time and again, strong renewable production has helped offset rising demand, reducing pressure on the power system and keeping net load well below levels that might otherwise be expected during this time of year. Figure 1 | SPP 12x24 Profile What makes this period particularly noteworthy is not a single wind event, but rather the persistence of elevated wind production throughout the month. Wind generation has frequently operated near the upper end of the ... » read more | |
| Monday Jun 22, 2026 | |
| Batteries make their money on the gap — the daily distance between the cheapest hours to charge and the priciest hours to discharge, plus whatever the grid will pay to hold capacity in reserve. Heading into the back half of June 2026, both of those revenue lines are running thinner than they were a year ago. Real-time arbitrage spreads have compressed sharply against June 2025, regulation-up is printing a fraction of its prior-year level, and the dispatch chart shows why the easy money is getting harder to find: there are simply more batteries chasing the same shape. This note walks through three slices of the Energy GPS ERCOT Battery Dashboard — the TB arbitrage table (Figure 1), regulation-up pricing (Figure 2), and the storage dispatch profiles (Figure 6). Unless noted ... » read more | |
| Friday Jun 19, 2026 | |
| For all the drama in the spot market, last week’s more telling move came in the forward curve as Monday’s day-ahead cash drifted back to roughly $31, PJM Western Hub forwards took into account what transpired during the mini-heat wave and what might lie ahead with the confidence in an El Nino summer escalating as we fast approach Q3-2026. The prompt July contract climbed +$3.54 on the day to $107.45, August added +$2.35 to $86.55, and every month from June through next January closed higher. That divergence - cash cooling while the curve bids - is the signal worth reading: the forward market is pricing a tighter summer than this mild stretch suggests, with July and August carrying the steepest premium. It wasn’t fuel, it was tightness A mid-week heat event pushed ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jun 18, 2026 | |
| The Columbia River hydro system hit a seasonal inflection point of the spill year this week. As we flagged in last week's PNW Hydro Flash, Tuesday the 16th marked the transition from 2026 spring spill operations to summer spill rules at the four Lower Columbia (LC) projects — McNary, John Day, The Dalles, and Bonneville — with the Lower Snake dams set to follow this Sunday, the 21st. The switch does the opposite of what we saw back in April at the start of the spring spill period: rather than pulling water off the turbines for juvenile fish passage, a portion of the water being spilled gets handed back to generation. The result showed up right away in the numbers. Figure 1 | Lower Columbia Hourly Generation Flows and Spill (kcfs) by Project Figure 1 plots actual hourly ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jun 17, 2026 | |
| Energy GPS is pleased to announce the new AESO Net Load Summary dashboard. As Alberta's grid continues to integrate growing volumes of wind and solar capacity, tracking how renewable output shapes the net load obligation on thermal and dispatchable resources has become increasingly important for market participants. This new daily dashboard provides a concise, at-a-glance view of AESO load, net load, and renewables, combining current-day actuals with day-ahead forecasts and historical context to help subscribers quickly assess how the grid is evolving from one day to the next. Table 1 | AESO Net Load Actuals and Forecast (MW) The dashboard opens with a detailed summary table presenting hourly-block averages for load, net load, and renewables across key time windows: the light-load ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jun 16, 2026 | |
| Early June offered another reminder that in ERCOT, strong demand forecasts do not always translate into record-breaking system peaks as discussed in our latest article titled “ERCOT Summer Peak Watch”. Despite widespread heat and expectations that June 10 and 11 could produce some of the highest demand intervals of the month, actual peak load ultimately came in below forecast. The outcome highlights a market that is becoming increasingly shaped not only by weather, but also by customer behavior and economic incentives. Figure 1 | ERCOT Daily Load One of the biggest drivers behind this trend is the growing influence of the 4CP season. As forecast demand begins approaching the upper-70 GW range, many large customers have a financial incentive to reduce electricity consumption ... » read more | |
| Monday Jun 15, 2026 | |
| An assumption people make about the Pacific Northwest power grid is it mainly runs on water. For most of 2026, this has been true given where the snowpack was dumped but the past several days is a useful reminder that the region’s natural gas fleet is needed. Molecules flowing on GTN and Northwest Pipeline (NWP) are sitting at the margin, and the margin is exactly where all the interesting action happens. When a heat event lands, when hydro is locked in and when wind picks the wrong moment to disappear, it is the gas fleet that absorbs the difference. The trigger: heat, load, and a price that broke away The story starts with temperature. A heat ridge pushed readings into the 90s across the region over the weekend, and forecasts had much of Oregon stepping even higher into Monday. » read more | |
| Friday Jun 12, 2026 | |
| Much of our writing and analysis at EGPS relates to price of key energy commodities such as electricity and natural gas. We expect that prices for energy and power will vary from region based on the unique supply and demand features and refer to the difference in price from place to place as “basis”. And the ability to purchase something in one place or at a place or time and either transport or store it for sale at a different location or time at a higher price as “arbitrage”. An underlying assumption of all this is that the commodity in question is fungible, in that a MWh of electricity or MMBtu of natural gas has no distinction from another - other than its location and availability at any one time. As a corollary to power markets, in recent years we have ... » read more | |