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| Friday Dec 21, 2018 | |
| As we are all experts at energy market fundamentals and analysis at Energy GPS, we consider it fun, on occasion, to apply our analytical skills to other commodity markets. With the Holiday season upon us, we thought we’d take a peek at a venerable Holiday commodity: the Christmas tree. Figure 1 | Made In Oregon Christmas trees are iconic in the US. Approximately 95 million U.S. households (75% of all U.S. households) display a Christmas tree. What piqued our interest in this market is its bullish prices in recent years. Prices for natural trees increased about 30% from 2015-2017 and appear to be holding steady for 2018 (Figure 2). (Figure 2 sources include USDA, National Christmas Tree Association, and Square.) Figure 2 | U.S. Sales and Prices of Natural Christmas ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 20, 2018 | |
| As I relished the fact that I had finished my Christmas shopping and found just the right gift for everyone, the realization struck me that the year was finally coming to a close and 2019 just around the corner. Just then a howling noise was heard as a gust of wind struck, blowing the receipt I was holding out of my hand. This led to a chase of a piece of paper down the street, with the help of many around me the receipt was back in good hands while the wind continued to blow. Returning to work the next day, I started to look ahead at what the next year might hold for generation across the ConUS with a focus on the four most prevalent technologies that are being developed; which are Natural Gas Combustion Turbines, Solar, Wind and Combined Cycle units. Knowing that combined ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 19, 2018 | |
| If the end of November and the first half of December is any indication of what is in store for 2019, we will be in for several ups and downs within the natural gas market as the supply/demand balance tries to find a home for the marginal molecule. On cold days, the gas molecule is in high demand as rescom is essentially a price taker whereas industrial is a close second given that the majority of the facilities are tied to operations within the energy space or have a high breakeven point. That leaves power burns as the lone component that will turn off given the appropriate price signal. What we learned in November is the old price levels are long gone during a winter month when rescom demand is strong and coal retirements/outages are prevalent. This led to ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 18, 2018 | |
| For the better part of six years the story in natural gas has been the build out in the production space with the advent and implementation of shale technology. In the eternal words of Reggie Jackson it was the "straw that stirred the drink". Over the past month, the natural gas community is not so concerned with how much is being taken out of the ground. The focus has turned to demand at a time when natural gas production has started to drop back from historical highs. Since the middle of October the total Lower 48 volumes have fallen by 2 BCF per day. Even more alarming is the fact that this occurred while the December futures raced up from $3.20 to $4.84. A portion of this issue can be pointed to pipeline and processing issues, but the question remains why we are not overachieving ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 17, 2018 | |
| If some of you have not heard, I am a die-hard Cheesehead and the Green Bay Packers are the team I root for the most. Over the years, I have been privileged to witness a two Super Bowl Championships along which goes back to the days when Brett Favre and Reggie White were the leaders of the team to the passing of the torch to Aaron Rodgers. This is usually a time when the Packer fan starts to look at the standings to see if they will be able to win the division to get a home game and a potential bye in the Wildcard round. The past two years have been far from bracket gazing as the Packers did not make the playoffs in the 2017-18 season. This off-season, the expectations ran high during training camp as a healthy Aaron Rodgers was in the cards and our defense ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 14, 2018 | |
| California has been building new solar facilities at a record pace. In 2017 we saw the first large scale solar curtailment in the CAISO. Developers, project owners, and buyers were all concerned that the “new normal” would include significant curtailment. There was a palpable fear that curtailment would increase materially as California’s renewable penetration rate increased. EnergyGPS published a detailed report in May 2017 analyzing the CAISO solar curtailments. The news was not good. Relative to 2016, curtailment – especially solar curtailment – was up considerably from 2016. April of 2017 experienced almost 85 GWh of combined solar and wind curtailment in the CAISO. March of 2017 was right behind that value with about 80 GWh of curtailment. At least in ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 13, 2018 | |
| Since the start of December, the weather pattern has delivered some below normal temperatures across the country. In the Pacific Northwest, Portland has been no different as last week saw the daytime highs stick around the 40 degree mark while the overnight lows were below the freezing level in many places. This lent itself to seeing your breathe in the early morning hours as you opened the door to get a gauge of how cold it really was outside. When I opened the door this week, I braced myself for the impact of the cold /wet gush of air the presented itself last week only to be greeted with a nice warm feel as the overnight temperatures have been in the upper 40's. As I sipped on my morning coffee, I took a look at the latest WSI weather patterns which told ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 12, 2018 | |
| We have discussed the wind penetration across the county in many of our daily blogs as well as Newsletter Articles and/or our Platinum Package Monthly Reports. In the case of ERCOT, they have become the front-runner when it comes to the installed capacity within a given footprint. This has led to some interesting days as some hours have over 50% of their power load served by wind. It was not that long ago where the coal and natural gas fired generation was battling it out for supremacy of who will be needed to produce the power to balance the electrical grid in question. Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Breakdown - Hourly With the coal retirements in play and the ERCOT wind capacity over 17 GW, the times have changed and it is not more evident than what is happening as we ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 11, 2018 | |
| As we close out the year it is time to take stock of the winter storage dynamics after a month and a half of the withdrawal season. The month of November got off to a cold start. As soon as the calendar flipped over to November the heating load started to pile up making the month look more like December. This early jump in demand combined with the seasonal pipeline and generator maintenance put added pressure on the storage complex to meet the strong demand numbers. As a result the above normal demand continued the summer long trend of offsetting the 8 BCF per day jump in gas production that was powered by the Permian and Marcellus growth. The storage deficit, after making up some ground in September and October is now back out to 700 BCF. But as we look at the year on year ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 10, 2018 | |
| A little James Taylor 'Carolina in my Mind' to start the week seems fitting as my son's soccer team is stuck in Raleigh, North Carolina after the ice storm known as 'Winter Storm Diego' set foot late Saturday night and all day Sunday. Not only were the last two matches of the tournament cancelled due to the Governor of North Carolina calling for a state wide emergency, all the flight in/out of Raleigh-Durham airport have been cancelled. The ice storm we are alluding to is not isolated to just North Carolina, it hindering the daily activities throughout the entire southeast as flights airports ranging from Knoxville, TN to Atlanta, GA are seeing cancellations tied to the weather. Figure 1 | Current Weather Map - Saturday - December 8th From a winter storm ... » read more | |
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