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| Friday Dec 12, 2025 | |
| It's the inverse of Christmas in July: Texas is having summer weather in December. Despite being about halfway through the month of December, the ERCOT region is looking at some warmth in the forecast. Temperatures are expected to reach highs in the upper 70s by the middle of next week, and stay there for several days. Figure 1 | Houston Weather Forecast (source) The weather impacts the shape of the load profile. Typically, demand during the winter months in ERCOT has a double-peak shape—cold weather drives heating demand, which is highest in the morning and evening, as opposed to cooling demand which is higher in the middle of the day. The difference can be seen in the 12x24 load profile in the figure below: Figure 2 | ERCOT Load, 12x24 Average, 2023 – 2025 YTD As the ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 11, 2025 | |
| The Northeast is enjoying a bit of a breather from the blistering cold that showed up early in the week. But things should start to turn around soon as temperatures should start to ease down again today headed towards a larger drop at the start of next week. The figure below is taken from our US Degree Day Matrix and shows how the 15-day forecast for the Northeast has evolved in recent days. Over the past couple of days the projected cold has intensified for the 15th and the 16th next week, with the HDD total eclipsing the 16.3 number seen on Tuesday. Figure 1 | Northeast HDD Forecast Matrix The cold this December in the Northeast has posed some new challenges for the region compared to the past several years. As the temperature drops in New England ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 10, 2025 | |
| November was a tough month for CAISO batteries looking to capture real-time energy arbitrage. The price profile batteries prefer, one with low charging prices in the middle of the day and high discharging prices in the evening ramp, was hard to find last month. The figure below is featured in our CAISO Daily Battery Dashboard. It displays net CAISO battery fleet charge in blue and discharge in orange. SP15 real-time prices are represent by the black line while NP15 real-time prices the brown line. On November 14th and 15th, battery discharge peaked under 5.0 GW. Most of the other days shown came in under 6 GW throughout the day. Oftentimes, the prices in the middle of the day fell not too far off from the highest prices of the day, shrinking the spread that batteries participating in ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 9, 2025 | |
| As we move deeper into December, the SPP footprint is finally catching a break from the persistent wintry pattern that settled in during the final week of November and carried straight through the first days of the month. That early-season cold pushed daytime highs well below normal across much of the region, with widespread freezing temperatures anchoring the North and dipping into portions of the Southern Plains. But conditions are now shifting. A milder regime is expected to take hold across much of SPP—especially in the South—marking a notable departure from the recent stretch of winter chill. Aside from a brief cooldown expected between December 13–15, forecasts point to a more temperate setup dominating the back half of the month, with several key cities ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 8, 2025 | |
| There might be no metric more important to the natural gas landscape than storage capacity. The state of storage conditions can shift the outlook for a market; the massive quantities of gas held in storage easily outweigh short-term bullish or bearish considerations. Of course, while storage volumes set the tone for the current market, day-to-day conditions determine where storage is headed next. With the first round of winter weather now hitting the lower 48, there is plenty of action on this front. Figure 1 | Midwest Storage Volume (MMCF) In our first figure, we visualize storage posting for the EIA, here for the Midwest region. This data source is useful in its breadth but only posts once a week and on a delay, so in the picture above we only see values through the 28th of November. » read more | |
| Friday Dec 5, 2025 | |
| With Thanksgiving in the rear-view mirror, we are now starting the countdown clock to Christmas. In a few weeks, kids will be unwrapping presents and enjoying their gifts! For those of us that are following supply and demand balances carefully, we will have to wait a little longer to unwrap the “Capacity Christmas” present. But I don’t think we will be disappointed with the magnitude of capacity additions in the WECC. The reason for the longer wait is the lag in reported capacity additions. That is, a monthly report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) called the “Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory” or the EIA 860M contains important generator online information. These data are released near ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 4, 2025 | |
| The Pacific Northwest has enjoyed a mild fall so far. Notwithstanding some coolness for the holiday weekend and this week so far, looking at average daily HDDs in November compared to previous years (shown in the figure below), we see an average of 16.8, the lowest (warmest) month of November going back to 2017. The mild temperatures are expected to continue moving forward deeper into December. The bottom pane of the column shows projected daily average HDDs through the first 15 days of the month in 2025, compared to historical values for the 1st half of December. At 20.1, HDDs this December are expected to come in lower than every year except for 2023 and nearly 5 degrees warmer than last year. Figure 1 | PNW Average Daily Heating Degree-Days by Year We can see ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 3, 2025 | |
| A winter warning sounded last week in the Midwest over the Thanksgiving holiday. Overnight lows dipped to frigid levels while snow blanketed roads and runways during one of the busiest travel periods of the year. The figure below weights temperatures from Midwest cities based on population to find an average temperature for the region each day. Blue indicates temperatures below normal while red days were warmer than normal. Last Wednesday, average temperatures dropped to 33 degrees F, down almost 15 degrees from the day before. By Thanksgiving, average temperatures dipped below the freezing mark, more than 5 degrees below normal. The cold has only intensified with average temperatures down to 22 degrees, 10 degrees below normal on Monday. Figure 1 | Average Midwest Temperatures and ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 2, 2025 | |
| Colder temperatures moving into the South Central U.S. since the final week of November through the first week of December have elevated power demand, particularly during early-morning light-load hours and the morning/evening ramp periods. Growing electrification, through mini-split units, electric furnaces, and supplemental electric heating, continues to shift winter load patterns away from traditional thermal units. With renewables gaining a larger footprint across ERCOT, SPP, and MISO-South, system operators rely more heavily on net load (demand minus wind and solar) to understand grid dynamics and anticipate volatility. As temperatures fall sharply across the Plains and major Texas metros, the regional hourly load shape is expected to transition into a “double-hump” ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 1, 2025 | |
| As we delve deeper in winter, we see nature slowing down. The yellows and reds on the trees have turned to brown and the flocks of birds migrating overhead are growing sparse. We see a similar slowdown in the renewable space, as the short days tighten solar output. This brings us close to the end of an exciting season, defined by capacity growth across the country. Here, we focus on California. The figure below shows cumulative renewable curtailments as reported by CAISO, where the line shows the sum of annual curtailments by date, with years differentiated by color. Figure 1 | CAISO Cumulative Renewable Curtailments (MWh) This year, curtailments started earlier while the recent trend has leveled out given Mother Nature decided to deliver cloudy skies for most of November. Starting ... » read more | |