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| Thursday Jan 30, 2025 | |
| Last week we finally saw the seasonal water supply forecast halt its weeks-long plunge downward from where it began the month at 95 MAF (91% of normal) all the way to 82.4 MAF (79% of normal) late last week. This mirrored a similar drop last year that took place a bit earlier in the 2024 water year in November and December and brought the MAF within 3 percentage points of the final Jan-Jul unregulated water volume in both the 2023 and 2024 water years, adjusting expectations for flows, generation and dam operations for the remainder of the winter and upcoming spring. The first two days of this week have further turned things on their head, as the forecast started to rise, increasing to 85.6 MAF (82% of normal) in yesterday afternoon’s release. This change has come ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 29, 2025 | |
| The last few weeks in California have been devastating with loss of life, homes, and communities due to the raging wildfires. At EnergyGPS, we’ve been covering the energy impacts with CAISO power market flashes. We’ve also been covering an unrelated battery facility fire in two recent battery reports. Fire broke out at what was once the world’s largest battery plant in the world, Vistra’s Moss Landing in Monterey, on January 16th. Almost two weeks later, questions surrounding the event remain as the investigation into the cause and possible safety failures is still in progress. Figure 1 | Fires in California The Moss Landing facility, which is the site of a retired natural gas plant, hosts batteries owned by Vistra and PG&E’s Elkhorn battery. Both have ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 28, 2025 | |
| PJM has kicked off 2025 with a significant test for the Northeast power grid, setting a new winter peak load record of 144.4 GW on January 22nd, as detailed in our latest special report titled “PJM – Record-Breaking Winter”. This record-breaking demand was driven by a combination of extreme cold weather and structural load growth, reflecting increased energy demand across the region. PJM successfully met this challenge by relying heavily on thermal generation, including coal, oil, and natural gas, which reached its highest winter output since 2021. This achievement highlights the grid's resilience but also underscores the continuing importance of conventional energy sources during peak demand periods. Figure 1 | PJM Daily Peak Load, Net Load and Thermal Generation by ... » read more | |
| Monday Jan 27, 2025 | |
| A ride on a rollercoaster, a fall on the ski slopes, a car accident, running into your a-little-too-low shelf: all these things can give you whiplash. For half a country to get whiplash it takes something a bit more dramatic like, for example, a sudden blast of artic air sweeping across the eastern US. Recent weather has hit natural gas and power markets like a poorly placed cabinet, and then left the picture just as quickly as it came. We see this effect in ERCOT which was hit by extreme cold and now looks forward to above average temperatures in the forecast. Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Hourly The above chart gives a view of net load within the balancing authority. The artic blast can be seen clearly in hourly load (red). The combination of increased demand and relatively stable ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 24, 2025 | |
| The Washington State Department of Ecology released a report on 2023 emissions in mid-November last year. The report titled "Washington Cap-and-Invest Program 2023 Cap-and-Invest Compliance Summary Report” provided our first glimpse into actual emissions in Washington State for the first compliance year of 2023. Covered emissions for 2023 along with 2023 compliance obligations (30% of emissions) were reported by entity as listed in the Compliance Instrument Tracking System Service (CITSS). An important implication of this is that entities with multiple facilities can consolidate reporting under a single CITSS ID thereby making our job of understanding where emissions are coming from difficult. Nonetheless, we have combed through the report and together with ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 23, 2025 | |
| The frigid temperatures delivered by Mother Nature from this week’s arctic blast are already on the way out, with the cold starting to recede today, but the impact on the power grid and gas pipelines was felt deeply. In the Northeast much of the impact was due to the competition between the sky-high rescom demand as folks cranked up the thermostat in their homes to drive away the chill, displacing a portion of the power burn demand and pushing driving down implied heat rates to push the power grid to look to other sources of thermal generation. But the Northeast is used to feeling the chill and is well-equipped to deal with cold temperatures as well as snowfall. Other parts of the country are not as prepared, and a little snow can have an outsized impact. The ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 22, 2025 | |
| Since the start of the year, eyes have been on the forecasts as cold hovered over much of the country. Over the weekend, the polar vortex arrived and carried with it big impacts for the grids that it hit. We’ve been covering the potential impacts for the Midwest and Northeast in power and natural gas flashes in the last week. Yesterday we looked back at how the Northeast natural gas market reacted in a special report, titled ‘Cold – Icing Power Burns?’. Read on for a sneak peek. Figure 1 | Polar Vortex – January 2025 Starting with the New York area, Transco Z6 NY ended up indexing $97.73 with a range between $75 and $109 while Non-NY settled in at the $37 mark. Up in the Boston area Algonquin tapped the $33.46 mark while Iroquois Zone 1 was slightly ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 21, 2025 | |
| Winter ushers in colder temperatures and frequently covers cities in the Upper Midwest and Northeast with snow. Occasionally, these weather patterns extend to regions like Atlanta, where even a few inches of snow can temporarily bring the city to a standstill. In our latest article title “MVP – The Pipe”, we go over the impact that the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) has made so far this winter. Figure 1 | PJM Monthly Total HDD The figure above illustrates the cumulative monthly Heating Degree Day (HDD) values for November through January in the PJM region. The x-axis represents years starting from 2017, while the y-axis divides the three-month period, with November at the top, December in the middle, and January at the bottom. A gray horizontal line indicates the ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 17, 2025 | |
| If you’re in the renewables space, it’s essential to have a view of natural gas and vice-versa if you’re in the natural gas space, you need to have a view of renewables. This hasn’t always been the case but now, natural gas prices generally set the market clearing price that renewables might expect to earn in many markets and ongoing penetration of renewables and batteries will continue to displace plenty of molecules of natural gas that would otherwise have been turned into MWhs. In timely fashion, EGPS has released articles and reports this week that cast light on current trends. The EGPS Q4 Renewable Quarterly Report, released this week, combines an in-depth review and discussion of the latest trends in natural gas with our usual ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 16, 2025 | |
| After a relatively mild end to 2024 when it comes to winter weather, over the first half of January much of the country has seen waves of deep winter chill spread, bringing cold temperatures and snow. Most of the cold has been concentrated east of the Rockies, however, leaving the West bereft of real winter weather up until this point. Temperatures are now starting to drop here in the Pacific Northwest, with the prospect of freezing weather in Portland later this week and next week, but the changing temperatures are not expected to bring with them any of the moisture that the Northwest is known for. Next week cold will blast again across the Midwest and East, with even locations as far south as Raleigh North Carolina expected to see snowfall, but the Pacific Northwest ... » read more | |