Featured Articles
| Wednesday Sep 30, 2015 | |
| Over the years, we have discussed the CAISO market in detail. One of the topics that comes to the forefront is the Ancillary Service markets, especially the Regulation Up and Spin markets as they tend to show binding constraints between what is known as SP26 (LA Basin) and the rest of the CAISO footprint. Today was one of those days, as the grid got longer day on day and the Regulation Up binding constraint widened. Figure 1 | CAISO Regulation Up Binding Constraint - Hourly The blue line is the price for Regulation Up across the state while the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 29, 2015 | |
| Now that October is getting close, both ERCOT and CAISO (yesterday's Newsletter) seem to be onboard with the fact that the power load across the country will continue to decline. This, in turn, will have an impact on the overall power burns across the country. This is evident in the recent power burns, as the weekend dipped down below 25 BCF. For Monday, things ticked up (25.8 BCF), but nowhere near the levels we saw a week ago (27.5 BCF). Figure 1 | North American Power Burns - Daily Such a shift down has prompted the month to date average for ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 28, 2015 | |
| With October right around the corner, it looks like both ERCOT and California are finally going to join the rest of the country's move down peak power demand over the past week. Up to this point, California has been looking at above normal temperatures throughout the month with Burbank seeing upper 90's as a high last week. Figure 1 | Burbank Forecast/Actual Temperatures This led to the overall CAISO peak demand to shift up to the 42,600 MW level, with both SCE and SDGE being the key drivers. Figure 2 | CAISO Peak Load Forecast As you can see in Figure 2 ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 25, 2015 | |
| The weekly EIA storage number posted a 106 BCF injection for the latest reporting period. This was anywhere from 6-8 BCF over market expectations and the highest number we have seen in some time. Such a change was mainly due to the power load shifting down, hence a big decrease in the overall power burns. Figure 1 | EIA Storage Numbers The thing that sticks out is the Producing region put in another 37 BCF this week, which adds to its growing storage level. Figure 2 | EIA Storage Numbers - Producing Region Over the past couple of weeks, we have been ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 24, 2015 | |
| CAISO LMPs increased for today as cleared demand jumped 2.4 GWs over the peak. Initially, the conditions seem very similar to earlier this week. Figure 1 | CAISO DA scheduled load Looking under the hood, the load is shifting lower in PGAE and higher down in Southern California as Burbank's highs are in the upper 90's. Such an event shifted the SCE load up 1,900 MW (at the peak) compared to Monday (21st). Figure 2 | SCE DA scheduled load The next piece if the engine is net virtuals, which saw the middle of the day shift down 1,100 MWa ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 23, 2015 | |
| As August ended, the big question was what were the hydro operators going to do with storage in Canada and the United States. Now that we are going on the 23rd day of September, I thought it would be good to take a look at how things have played out. First, the total hydro output has averaged around 8800 MW across the 24 hour strip. This is right in-line with the EnergyGPS Long Term forecast model run that was released in mid-August. What is interesting is the flexibility the system has as he heavy load has been averaging over 11,000 MW over ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 22, 2015 | |
| Going into this week, it was pretty much known that the AC (Paci) transmission line was going to be de-rated during a period of heavy load hours in some capacity. By all accounts, the estimated reduction of MWs was roughly 1,000 MWa. This held true for Monday's auction clears as Paci flows decreased by 800 MWa starting HE 8. Figure 1 | Paci Day Ahead Flows - Hourly With CAISO's load shifting up as well, due to the warmer weather, the grid was roughly 4,400 MWa shorter day on day when you look at load and Paci flows. Figure 2 | CAISO Day Ahead ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 21, 2015 | |
| The entire continental United States is looking at moderate loads as we head into Fall. This was evident once again as you watched the NFL ticket and all the games on Sunday. From Buffalo, New York to games on the West Coast, the weather looked fantastic (unlike some of our favorite teams). This translates into moderate power load across the country, which can be seen in the EnergyGPS NG Power Load report below. Figure 1 | NG Power Load Report - Daily The only region that is seeing above normal temperatures right now is the state of California as ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 18, 2015 | |
| With the latest EIA storage report showing another 21 BCF increase in the Producing region, the overall levels increased to 303 BCF over last year and 149 BCF over the 5 year average. Figure 1 | EIA Weekly Storage Breakout This might not seem like a big deal at first, but when you look at the progression over the past 6 weeks, things are back on track for storage levels to be at an all time high. Figure 2 | Producing Region Storage - Year on Year Looking at Figure 2, you can see back in April when this year crossed over the 2013 level and on track to ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 17, 2015 | |
| One of the main discussions heading into this fall was the anticipation of a high number of nuclear outages. Nuclear units must refuel every 18-24 months and need to come completely offline for weeks at a time in order to do so. Typically, these outages are clustered during the Spring and Fall shoulder months. Last spring saw the lowest nuclear outages in the last five years. As a result, planned outages this spring are expected to hit a 3 year high for the fall. Figure 1 | Forecasted Nuclear Outages (MW) - Daily Over the weekend ... » read more | |
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