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| Monday Oct 28, 2024 | |
| With the end of last week bringing another downturn in California spot natural gas prices, now seems a good time to review how shoulder season has been going for this turbulent market. Our focus today is on SoCal, which today looks worse for wear than its northern neighbor. The overabundance of renewables in this energy market is far from new news, but every month brings another surprise as to the depth of the impact on other resources. Figure 1 | SP15 Power Burns 2023 and ‘24 Our 1st figure shows a comparison of year over year power burns within the SP15 power market. In the second half of October, this year’s power burns have departed from the last year’s as demand dried up. The beginning of the month brough abnormal late season heat, but the return of mild weather ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 25, 2024 | |
| I, Tim Belden, obsessed over the 2020 Presidential election to the point that it was unhealthy. I tracked every poll. I commented when people said crazy things on social media. I became agitated more often than I would have liked. In general, it was a very intense time with COVID and social unrest. Four years later, I still care deeply about the outcome of the election, but I’m doing my best to maintain a healthier mental framework. One way to keep some healthy detachment is to look back at the quality of my life during Republican versus Democratic administrations. I had a great time in college and then living in New York City during the Geore H.W. Bush Administration. I got married and had my first child when Clinton was President. During the George “W” Bush ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 24, 2024 | |
| Last week, our blog focused on an uptick in wind showing in the forecast for ERCOT for the coming (this) week. A lot of the conversation around renewables in ERCOT this year has been focused on the solar component given its explosive growth over the past 12 months. Batteries have also received plenty of attention now that peak evening dispatch is approximately 10 times higher so far this month compared to last October at 2.5 GW and the ISO’s battery fleet is supplying over 500 MW on average for the morning high as well. ERCOT wind has not seen the same level of change from new projects coming online with capacity up only a few 100 MW over the summer. But the current events within the state of Texas are a reminder that the wind component is not to be ignored ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 23, 2024 | |
| Yesterday morning, Alberta’s pool price went to the $1000/MWh cap and AESO declared an Energy Emergency Alert Level 3. It occurred in hour ending 8 as Albertans were waking to chilly temperatures as overnight lows had dropped below the freezing mark. Demand was on the rise at 10.3 GW, below the eventual morning peak and below the 10.7 GW peak from the night before. The region’s growing solar resources had only 150 MW to offer to the grid in the cold autumn morning. The solar profile narrows during this time of year. However, the biggest gap came from the region’s other renewable resource: wind. On average this October, wind generation at HE 8 has been around 1.6 GW. Yesterday in HE 8, wind generation was below 0.4 GW. In the early morning hours, it was even lower. The ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 22, 2024 | |
| As October draws to a close and autumn deepens, cooler temperatures begin to make their presence felt, signaling the seasonal shift from mild days to the crisp chill of fall. This change marks a turning point in the natural gas market, where heating demand begins to rise once again, reversing the summer lull. The shift in weather not only impacts demand but also marks the end of the storage injection season, transitioning into the crucial period of withdrawals from underground caverns. This dynamic sets the stage for the upcoming winter, shaping market strategies and price movements in the weeks ahead. Taking a step back, the summer of 2024 began with Alberta's natural gas storage caverns well-stocked, following a mild winter with minimal withdrawals. This surplus laid a solid foundation ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 21, 2024 | |
| Halloween is just around the corner, as signaled by the giant skeletons appearing on front lawns and bulk bags of candy crowding grocery store shelves. Everyone knows we are close to the event of the season, in terms of candy consumption. But now, candy storage is at a high, and tricker treaters don’t even have their costumes together yet. Trade out candy for natural gas, and Halloween for Winter and you have the situation in West gas markets. Everyone knows the cold is near, but that does not do much good when most of California can go to dinner in a T-Shirt. The massive quantities of gas sitting in storage caverns mean that there’s no critical need to inject gas, just as there’s no critical need to run to the convenience store for a Snickers. Figure 1 | Regional Daily ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 18, 2024 | |
| There are many ways to describe a set of numbers: max, min, average, sum, median, mode, variance, standard deviation, etc. Each tells us something but doesn’t always describe the whole picture. As we look at wind generation in ERCOT over the next few days, we focus on one metric: the daily average (flat). A substantial amount of wind is in the forecast for ERCOT for the end of this week, with Friday October 18th expecting a daily average that is well above the norm for this time of year. In Figure 1 below, taken on 10/17/24 from the EPGS ERCOT Real-Time Dashboard, the dark blue line shows actual hourly wind generation, and the light blue line is the forecast. Shown as a grey horizontal line, a daily average wind generation of 23.0 GW ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 17, 2024 | |
| Last week saw the final piece of information made available to look at how the renewable scene played out in ERCOT over the past summer. Always on a delay to be posted all at once for the prior month, last week ERCOT’s solar and wind curtailment numbers for September were posted to round out the Q3 period. This is one of the markets focused on in our latest Renewable Quarterly report, “Q3 2024: Solar Wows for the Summer”. Fears were sparked heading into the summer based on the expectation for structural load growth to leave ERCOT facing new highs in summer demand. This was the case last summer, when the structural changes tied to new data centers and cryptocurrency facilities combined with a warm August to push prices to their highest levels seen ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 16, 2024 | |
| Last week was big for the largest battery fleets in the country. Both the CAISO and ERCOT battery fleets reached new peak dispatch levels last Monday, October 7th. For CAISO, the new maximum output is 8.4 GW while ERCOT’s fleet development remains a few years behind. The ERCOT fleet peaked at 4.0 GW. For both, the new records just barely surpassed the old ones, moving up around 100 MW. The figure below displays each fleet’s running maximum output for 2024. This time of year, dispatch growth tends to be more stagnant while the spring and summer typically offer more capacity growth and times of scarcity that lead to broken dispatch records. In our latest battery report, titled ‘New Peaks for Battery Fleets’, we checked in on the growing capacity levels for both ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 15, 2024 | |
| Typically, the month of October is the time when the weather changes, with the transition from summer conditions to autumn cooler temperatures. However, it has not been the case across the Southwest Power Pool region as Mother nature delivered some heat during the first half of this month (October). We see that in the matrix below which displays the cooling degree days (CDDs), by showing the difference from the normal conditions, with the red color indicating much above normal conditions and purple showing the opposite. Except for the two days of October where we observed below normal conditions, the month of October has been unusually warm. Figure 1 | South SPP CDD – Departure from Normal As a result, the energy demand has been strong this month, much higher than the levels ... » read more | |