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| Monday Nov 3, 2025 | |
| Here in Portland, on-and-off rainy weather has settled over the valley. In just the last week we have had downpours, clear blue skies, and a double rainbow. Zooming out, the Pacific northwest is likewise looking forward to a mixed bag of winter precipitation. This has us hard at work, considering what this means for upcoming hydro generation in the Columbia basin. Figure 1 | NWRFC 120 day Volume (% of Average) Forecast This forecast estimates water volumes for point across the PNW in the next 120 days. This gives us a view into expected precipitation and hydro operations across the Columbia, North America’s most energy-rich river basin. Above, we see volumes coded by color in terms of percent of average. Predicted volumes paint a picture of varied conditions, with healthy river ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 31, 2025 | |
| We’ve observed record-level capacity additions in the WECC in the last few years with nearly 12 GW of additions in 2023, 16 GW in 2024, and almost 11 GW through September 2025. The distribution of this capacity among resource type, and location, can have a large impact on hourly price formation. Figure 1 depicts the additions by resource type and year. Figure 1 | Historical capacity additions by fuel type in the U.S. portion of the WECC. Data from the EIA 860M through September 2025. The figure above shows the capacity additions across the WECC by year and by resource type with only data available through September 2025. Record levels of capacity were added in 2023 and 2024, and this capacity was comprised primarily of storage and solar ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 30, 2025 | |
| The last several days have marked an uptick in load within CAISO, as the state of California has seen some shoulder season heat with temperatures in Sacramento north of 80 degrees and Burbank sitting at 90+ degrees for the afternoon high. Also playing into the CAISO load equation is the rapid and continued growth in the ISO’s battery fleet. The figure below is taken from our US Renewables Dashboard and plots CAISO total battery capacity since the start of 2022, including past reported actuals as well as forecasted capacity growth into 2026. Since the end of last year, battery capacity has risen from 12 GW and is expected to hit 15.5 GW by the end of 2025. Figure 1 | CAISO Battery Capacity The growth has been accompanied by steady expansion of ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 29, 2025 | |
| Like many US regions, the Alberta power grid is experiencing structural load growth. Even with mostly above-normal temperatures staving off the usual frigid fall weather, demand levels are still outpacing recent years. The figure below, featured in our AESO Supply Demand dashboard, plots average Calgary temperatures against average AESO load levels in September and October. The red circles represent days in 2025, while the yellow displays data from 2024 and the blue from 2023. The red circles are clustered in the top right quadrant, representing both warmer and higher demand days. Despite this extra demand, pool prices have been coming in at $0/MWh for several hours most days in the last week. We’ll dive into the reasons for the low pricing in this blog. Figure 1 | Average Calgary ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 28, 2025 | |
| The South Central market is seeing mixed signals this fall as Mother Nature is set to play both sides of the temperature spectrum. After an extended stretch of warmer-than-normal conditions that kept demand elevated, cooler air is set to arrive in the coming days, briefly easing system load. However, forecasts call for a return of above-normal temperatures in the 10-15-day outlook, suggesting that demand could rebound and remain somewhat elevated heading into early November. Overall, the next 10–15 days are not shaping up to be particularly bullish, with temperatures expected to stay on the warm side of seasonal norms. Figure 1 | South Central Weather Forecast, October 27-November 10 – AG2 Trader As temperatures begin to ease, demand is trending lower—ushering in ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 27, 2025 | |
| As the parable of the ant and the grasshopper taught us, when winter is coming it pays to be prepared. This is very true in the world of natural gas. While the ant stores grain for future eating, natural gas operators store molecules for future heating. There is always a wide degree of uncertainty as to how much gas will be needed, as an especially cold winter can push demand well above the norm. At present, this story is playing out across the country, here we look at just one example. Figure 1 | Aliso Canyon Storage (MMCF) Pictured above are storage levels for Aliso Canyon in 2025 (dark blue), 2024 (red), and 2022 (light blue). As SoCal’s largest storage facility, it plays a key role in ensuring the utility’s winter reliability. However, ever since its infamous 2015 gas ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 24, 2025 | |
| Although most of our consulting and product services at EGPS revolves around wholesale electric power (generation, transmission, storage and capacity) and natural gas markets, we often have requests to examine what’s happening at the retail level for various customer classes in different parts of the country. At the point of customer delivery, retail rates include all the costs that a utility has borne to deliver that power, plus an approved rate of return. In deregulated markets, the cost of wholesale power is a pass-through from the utility to the customer while all the other expenses, including transmission, distribution, and various other costs get layered into a retail rate that varies by customer class. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 23, 2025 | |
| As we enter the final stretch of October, we are in the midst of several transitionary periods. Along both coasts, in both the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast temperatures are dropping as Mother Nature brings nighttime chill to the table (especially in the Northeast where the expected cold for the weekend and early next week has deepened progressively in the forecast over the course of the week). Another transitionary point is here as the fall maintenance season is reaching (or has already reached) its zenith in many power markets and the generation outages that have been building over the past 6 weeks or more are now on the decline, bringing the needed capacity back to the supply stack in advance of the real winter cold. Figure 1 | Total US Nuclear Plant Outage ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 22, 2025 | |
| With increased use of renewable energy, comes an increased need for flexible resources like batteries. Wind and solar provide power without the burning of fossil fuels, helping to reduce carbon emissions. The drawback is their generation is dependent on Mother Nature’s whims. The sun’s path is set while wind generation is variable. During the summer, demand usually peaks in the evening hours, but the solar and wind profile is rarely perfectly shaped to match it. Batteries are well-suited to make up for this mismatch in timing between renewable supply and energy demand. They can charge in the middle of the day when solar generation is abundant and discharge in the evening peak when demand is high. Increasingly in the last several years, battery fleets in CAISO and ERCOT have ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 21, 2025 | |
| As we head into the 2025–26 winter season, all eyes are on the Pacific, where ocean temperatures are cooling and signaling the potential return of La Niña—though this time in a weaker, shorter-lived form. Forecasters estimate roughly a 70 percent chance of La Niña conditions developing by late fall, which could shape everything from heavier snowfall in the Pacific Northwest to drier conditions across the southern United States. While this pattern may not pack the punch of stronger La Niña years, even a modest cooling phase can tilt the odds toward a chillier, stormier setup in the north and a warmer, drier one in the south—setting the stage for a season that’s anything but predictable. However, colder temperatures are not yet in sight for ... » read more | |