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| Friday Sep 12, 2025 | |
| Garbage in, garbage out. A phrase that underscores the relationship between the quality of input data and the quality of output data. This is a fundamental principle in many fields, including production cost modelling. A goal when operating a production cost model (PCM) is to use input data that is as high quality as possible, with the hope that it will produce output data representative of reality. Not only can it be difficult to obtain high quality data, but it can be difficult defining what “high quality” even means. There is no perfect dataset, and importantly, whatever dataset that is chosen will propagate its biases forward into the results of the PCM. The difficulty in determining what “high quality is” is not to imply that “all datasets are ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 11, 2025 | |
| It was right around a year ago that ERCOT finally edged out CAISO in solar portion of the renewable transition competition. California had the first mover advantage and got off to a significant head start, but over the previous two years ERCOT had been playing catchup when it comes to solar buildout. It was during Q3 of 2024 that ERCOT reached a maximum observed solar potential of 20 GW, reaching the same level as CAISO. Since that time over the past year ERCOT has pulled into the lead. Further east other markets have been making their own frantic investments into solar capacity, with MISO and PJM rocketing up to more than double their capacity from last summer (MISO) or increase by over 50% (PJM). The rapid renewable growth in markets across the country has been ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 10, 2025 | |
| A Level 3 Energy Emergency alert was called on Monday night in Alberta. AESO has three levels of energy emergency alerts, or EEAs, with level 3 defined by AESO as when “firm load interruption is imminent or in progress”. On Monday night, pool prices shot to $999.99/MWh in HE 18 and stayed there until HE 20. The EEA 3 was called at 18:54 and stayed in place for a little over an hour. There were several factors with this event, including above-normal heat, missed forecasts, and limited transmission. The province is in the middle of a long stretch of above-normal temperatures. Combined with structural load growth, the hot weather has brought high levels of demand this summer. Last night’s peak demand came in over 11 GW and a couple hundred megawatts over the forecasted ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 9, 2025 | |
| The Midwest has been under a prolonged stretch of colder-than-normal weather since late August, with average temperatures dropping well below seasonal norms. By early September, daytime highs were averaging in the 60s, more than 15 degrees below normal, and the cold pattern is expected to continue this week. Forecasts suggest the northern parts of MISO will stay cool with lows dipping into the 40s, while southern areas will also experience brief cooler conditions. Figure 1 | Midwest Average Temperatures and Differences from Normal (Aug. – Sept. 2025) This drop in temperatures has directly reduced electricity demand across the MISO grid. Peak demand, which often tops 90 GW in late summer, came in significantly lower, with peaks in the 70s GW range. At the same time, wind generation ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 8, 2025 | |
| SPP has experienced both worlds from warmer to cooler-than-normal conditions this summer. Weather patterns have been milder than average since late spring, particularly in May and June, when Cooling Degree Days (CDDs) registered well below historical norms. July saw more typical summer heat, but August brought alternating stretches of above and below-normal temperatures, with cumulative CDDs falling short of both 2024 levels and the long-term average. These fluctuations underscore how weather continues to be a major driver of volatility in demand, net load, and prices across the region. Figure 1 | South SPP Monthly Cumulative CDDs in May through August (2017 – 2025) On the demand side, July’s stronger heat elevated loads above recent years, while August’s milder ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 5, 2025 | |
| I (Tim Belden) recently participated in NewsData’s “Western Energy Summit” held in Boise, Idaho at the end of August. It was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in a while. It sounds like they plan to make it an annual thing – put it on your radar for next year. The general theme related to how will the WECC meet the combined challenges of the future – keep the lights on in an era of strong load growth, meet the blue state de-carbonization goals which require resource additions at an unprecedented level, coordinate the natural gas and power sectors during the coldest days of the winter, all while managing the costs for utility customers. Figure 1 | Western Energy Summit - NewsData We heard from a dizzying array of regional, national, and ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 4, 2025 | |
| Over the final portion of August and early September, the Northeast has struggled to extricate itself from the unusually cool weather pattern that has been in place over much of the Midwest and eastern US. Over the next three days some warmth is expected to move through the region to sit along the East Coast, but more cool weather is already making its way into the Northeast from the west and should shove the tentative warmth aside quickly by week’s end. This early prelude to the coming autumn is prompting changes of all sorts for the power grid as we move closer towards outage season. In NYISO, one of the changes that has showed up this week has been a shift in daily transmission patterns. Our newest addition to the Energy GPS Enterprise product offerings ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 3, 2025 | |
| Labor Day weekend is officially behind us, marking the unofficial end to summer. Students are back in the classroom and Halloween decorations are already filling up store shelves. The next few weeks will be a transition period with weather gradually cooling down and leaves gradually turning color. For US energy grids, it’ll be a transition into shoulder months and the start of outage season. Nuclear outages remain small for now, totaling just under 1.2 GW yesterday. The table below is featured in our NRC Nuclear Change Dashboard. Just nine plants are experiencing partial outages. However, more than 20 plants are expected to come offline for refueling in the coming months. A few plants, including Catawba 2 in South Carolina and North Anna 1 in Virginia, have already started slowing ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 29, 2025 | |
| Everyone is talking about the cold weather pattern swooping down from Canada and smothering the Upper Midwest, through the Ohio Valley and tapping the Northeast. Looking at the jet stream pattern and where the low and high pressure systems hit, the upcoming 3-7 day forecast has cooler weather moving down into the South Central region as after tomorrow, cities like Dallas, TX are looking at highs in the mid-80's over the long holiday weekend. Figure 1 | Texas Average Temperatures – Actual and Forecast This is atypically cool for the end of the month of August, and it is translating into lower demand (and, as we discussed in our most recent South Central Market Flash, lower power burns). In Texas, it is also showing up in the form of lower solar generation, thanks to the cloud ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 28, 2025 | |
| The late spring and early summer was characterized by a cycle of warm weather starting in the Midwest and moving eastward over the course of several days, traveling through PJM and the rest of the Northeast until reaching the East coast, only to recede and start the cycle again later. In fact, it has been the Midwest and Northeast that has been the focus for warmth and demand this summer. But this pattern slowed during August and now with September just a few days away the future looks markedly different. Most of the East appears to be leaving the summer behind, with the last block of hot weather now more than ten days in the past, and the forecast showing nothing but mild conditions moving forward to the end of the month and through the first third of September. Demand ... » read more | |