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| Monday Apr 8, 2024 | |
| Stretch Armstrong is a large gel-filled action figure from the 1970’s where the doll’s most notable feature is that it can be stretched from its normal size of about 15 inches to four or five feet. Figure 1 | Stretch ‘California Hydro’ Armstrong This is an incredible feat if you stop and think about it from a technology standpoint given the fact that the stretch is roughly 4 to 5 times what is normal and knowing that it reverts back to its starting shape. California hydro is going to be needing to have a little gel-filled Stretch Armstrong action this spring given the simple fact that the midday real-time prices are deeply negative with this past weekend tapping -$92.00 for an hour with several others carrying -$70 and -$80 handles. Such prices are tied to ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 5, 2024 | |
| There is never a dull moment in the energy sectors as each regional balancing act continues to consider renewable penetration, swinging natural gas flows from maintenance/production cuts and weather conditions. EnergyGPS continues to churn out new products in the form of outright packages, individual pieces of content that display pertinent information that has an impact on the balancing mentioned and ultimately the price action in both the power and natural gas markets and our consulting work related to the renewable space. Figure 1 | CAISO Battery Breakdown – Price/Volume For starters, we rolled out the EnergyGPS Battery Package at the start of April where we rolled it into the eCommerce Platinum Plus product offering that can be found by clicking on the link provided. The ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 4, 2024 | |
| There are certain key events that mark the changing of seasons throughout the year. The day after Thanksgiving is know to some as Black Friday, but in my neck of the woods it’s more significant as the day the Christmas season has begun, triggering an open season on holiday tunes. Some say that the marker for the transition from winter to spring comes in early February on Groundhog day, when whether or not our furry friend can see his shadow determines whether we’re in for an early spring or six more weeks of winter. Here in the Pacific Northwest, however, we know that spring has not truly begun until April 3rd, which marks the start of spring fish spill on the Northwest river system. Figure 1 | Average Hourly Lower Snake Hydro Generation (MW) Each year ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 3, 2024 | |
| In a recent battery report, titled ‘A Little Off the Top’, we wrote about the impact batteries may have on the DAM TB4 in CAISO, based on a theoretical dispatch of batteries into a typical August day net load shape. As more batteries that charge in the midday and dispatch in the evening are added to the CAISO fleet, the duck curve will slowly be whittled away. In a more recent report, titled ‘Peaks & Plateaus in SP15’, we took a deeper look at how recent historical operations and market outcomes are adhering to our over-optimized and over-simplified sample dispatch, reprinted below. Read on for a sneak preview of the battery report. Figure 1 | Illustrative impact of batteries on net load shape, average August day, 2022-2023 For starters, we can look at ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 2, 2024 | |
| The ingredients are simple when it comes to MISO soup as some of the best out there combines the broth with small pieces of tofu, seaweed, and a few thinly sliced scallions. Served hot as a precursor to a couple of your favorite sushi rolls makes going out to dinner a simple pleasure in almost any city. Figure 1 | MISO Soup and Net Load Ingredients In the energy sector, the simple ingredients to the ‘net load’ are just as simple as MISO soup as the base (broth) is the power demand profile that is anchored throughout any region by the consumption of electricity via residential, commercial, and industrial entities. The broth can be a bit salty at times or the paste utilized by some can taste a little flat if it has been sitting there for a few hours. The added ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 1, 2024 | |
| California gets another round of storms, which means more flooding in Southern California while the snowpack levels rose in the Sierra Mountains. Reading the headlines Sunday morning, the Golden State is feeling Mother Nature’s wrath as a portion of Hwy 1 washed out and the iconic highway looking over the Pacific Ocean will be out of commission once again. Figure 1 | Renewables and the Storms Down in Southern California, any spring breakers who thought the sunny destination tied to San Diego over to Palm Spring and hooked into the Phoenix area had another thing coming as the precipitation pattern was relentless starting late Friday night and still going into Sunday afternoon. The impact to the state’s water year was detailed in the EnergyGPS West Hydro Market ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 28, 2024 | |
| Coming on the heels of a massive water year last year, this spring the hydro situation in California is not quite as overwhelming as it was in 2023, but still looks very healthy with robust generation currently in effect, on top of strong hydro storage reserves and snowpack. The state has not come close to matching last spring’s record-setting snow accumulation, but total snow water equivalent is currently above average at 26.5 inches and is building again after a brief period of melt from mid-March through Friday of last week on the 22nd. For the last two months, CAISO hydro generation has exceeded last year, by 600 MW in February (averaging 2.5 GW) and 100 MW for the month of March to date (at just over 3 GW). Figure 1 | Monthly Average CAISO Total Hydro Generation ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 27, 2024 | |
| Two weeks ago in this blog, we wrote about the nuclear outages during spring maintenance season lagging behind previous years. However, our nuclear outage forecast had the outage total springing up in the last half of March which is exactly what we’ve seen. The figure below is featured in our daily NRC Nuclear Plant Summary report and shows outage levels year-on-year back to 2019 as well as our estimated forecast line. Note our forecast line only includes planned refueling outages and current unplanned outages. When we wrote our last blog, this year’s outages came in below 2022 and 2023 levels by more than 4 GW. As of March 26th, this year leads 2022 by 2.5 GW and last year by more than 4 GW. Yesterday’s total nuclear outages surpassed 16.7 GW with a peak expected later ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 25, 2024 | |
| The slogan ‘Message in a Bottle’ came about by someone placing a message they wrote into a container that was shaped like a bottle where it was sealed and throwing into the water. The goal was for the natural currents to take the message to far away parts with the hope that someone would find it, open the container, and read the message. In 1999, the slogan was made into a romantic film starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright-Penn where a writer (Theresa-Robin) falls in love with a shipbuilder (Garrett – Kevin) after finding a bottle with letters in them on the sandy beaches of Cape Cod. Figure 1 | Message/Winter in a Bottle The last week of March 2024 does not entail a romantic love story if you reside in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic or the Northeast as Mother ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 22, 2024 | |
| The Easter Bunny will be hiding all the eggs here soon where the little ones will be running around the backyard with their decorative baskets looking for the treasures inside. Many times it is their favorite candy while some of the eggs, when opened carry with them coins or dollar bills. Figure 1 | Easter Egg Baskets There are times during the gathering of eggs where parents need to get involved due to the age of the children as the older ones are racing around grabbing everything in sight while the younger one’s basket is nearly empty. The parent’s understand that if ‘all the eggs are in one basket’, it will end up with some sadness on a day that is suppose to bring joy to everyone as it officially kicks off spring. A safer bet is ... » read more | |