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| Monday Jan 6, 2025 | |
| Extreme weather events, like the one that is hitting the Lower 48 east of the Rockies, tend to get the attention as demand soars, production volume deals with freeze-offs and the battle of the molecule between power burns and rescom come into play. In today’s blog, we are concentrating on the flip side of things as the West region is on the outside looking in when it comes to the below-normal temperatures, which is a bit of a switch compared to the 2022-2023 Winter and last January (2024). The stable supply/demand balancing equation, surplus of storage gas and lacking power demand has created stable natural gas settles which then drive the CAISO day-ahead auction clears on the power side. Figure 1 | Peak Day Ahead Load vs Flat Average California Temperature The ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 3, 2025 | |
| The calendar changed hands this week with 2024 going in the books while 2025’s is staring at arctic cold that starts in Canada and moves its way down into the Upper Midwest and East starting today. By next week, the entire country east of the Rockies is going to be working through below normal temperatures with each region tapping their respective winter lows. The West is shielded this go around by the Rocky Mountain divide as the weather model runs has the Pacific Northwest looking at highs in the mid 40’s while California has Sacramento in the low 60’s while Burbank is showing numbers in the low 70’s with sunny skies. Figure 1 | Weathering the New Year The near-term (1-5 day), shown in the leftmost image of Figure 1, has the dark blue coloration ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 2, 2025 | |
| As the new year has rolled around, the Northwest hydro system has seen a surge to finish off the month of December and set up things moving forward in a way that should have the region awash in water and MW to start off January. The figure below plots daily average total system hydro generation, and the far right of the figure shows the line in blue for 2024 surging from 11.7 GW of generation on the 28th of December all the way up to 14.8 GW on the final day of the month on the 31st. The reasons behind the change cannot be entirely tied to rainfall in the PNW. The Northwest has certainly seen wet conditions—especially over the second half of the month, as for December as a whole total unregulated flows were only 82% of normal at The Dalles—but some of that ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 31, 2024 | |
| Back in October, we discussed how the natural gas market in Western Canada has been transforming over the past 12 months. We examined both demand and supply components across the region. Starting with key demand components, we saw an increase in the flows from Alberta crossing the Empress border, with levels surpassing the 4 Bcf/d mark since November 2023. Figure 1 shows the monthly average data for Alberta intra-demand, Empress demand, and storage movements since 2019. In January 2024, recorded flows reached 4.38 Bcf/d, significantly higher than the previous year's average of 3.71 Bcf/d. This expansion underscores the growing capacity of the Empress border to move natural gas molecules from Alberta to the central/eastern parts of Canada and the Midwest region of the Lower 48. This past ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 30, 2024 | |
| The Cascades and Sierra Nevada have both seen healthy snowfall in the early season. For some, this means New Year’s Day will be spent enjoying snow sports and fresh powder, but hydroelectric dispatchers look at these numbers a bit differently. For all the ski bums and weekend warriors, snow should be enjoyed well its here, but in the turbine room of a dam snow is not worth much until it melts and flows downhill. Still, the snow has value as it acts as a convenient storage reserve, holding massive amounts of H20 through the winter months and then releasing it just as the grid starts to call for power. Figure 1 | California Snow Water Compared to Normal The above chart shows snowpack for the state of California as a percent of the normal accumulation on April 1st. This date is ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 27, 2024 | |
| The holiday spirit has several songs associated to this time of the year with “Let it Snow” carrying the lyrics “the weather outside is frightful, yet so delightful…..”. For example, New York City witnessed its first snowfall blanketing the city on Christmas in 15 years (not since 2009) while Upper Midwest was on the brink of a snowless Santa Clause run if it were not for a couple of storms that dropped the white stuff a few days prior. Since that time, the warmer temperatures have melted most of the snow and we are now staring at a not-so-white New Year. The Pacific Northwest is a region we watch closely given the hydro landscape up/down the Columbia, Snake and tributary rivers that eventually move its water out to the Pacific Ocean. ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 26, 2024 | |
| New England is no stranger to wintertime tightness, both for the ISONE electrical grid as well as the gas pipelines, starting with Algonquin Pipeline. Every year as the weather dips cold enough, we see gas prices start to run up on Algonquin Pipeline as the limited capacity on the pipe means that rising rescom heating demand in the region eats up most or all of the available gas molecules, crowding out power burns. This then causes an issue on the power side, as the lost supply from the drop in gas-fired generation leaves ISONE searching to make up the lost generation from other sources, as well as find the incremental MW for the increased load that comes with cooler temperatures. This pushes Massachusetts Hub upwards until the price signal is sufficient to bring in the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 24, 2024 | |
| Our latest hydro report, titled "Wet (Not White) Christmas" provides detailed insights into the hydro world with projections for the coming months. The Pacific Northwest has recently seen a temporary break from persistent rainfall that increased water flow and hydro generation, particularly in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Despite this pause, heavy rain is expected to return, especially in the northern parts of the region. The ongoing precipitation has significantly impacted the seasonal water supply forecast, with the January-July water supply projection rising by more than 10 MAF over the past two weeks. However, the forecast could adjust as drier weather is expected in the coming days, although more precipitation is expected at the start of the new year. Figure 1 | NWRFC Jan-Jul ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 23, 2024 | |
| In recent years, the only thing you can count on from California’s rivers has been their unpredictability, with high highs and low lows. We saw this once again illustrated a month ago. Long-term forecasts had predicted a slow start leading into a near-average water year. This was interrupted by a bomb cyclone and atmospheric river which delivered feet of snow to the Sierra Nevadas and in some places broke records due to arriving so early in the season. They are no crystal ball, but these forecasts are an important tool for looking into the future of California’s hydroelectric system. Figure 1 | San Joaquin & Sacramento River Flows (MAF) The above figure shows a composite of flows in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers, the two watersheds on which California’s dams ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 20, 2024 | |
| A few weeks ago, we wrote about the Mid C returning to earth as prices have declined from $100+ to swinging between $38 and $60 per MWh. During the same week we wrote about increasing solar and battery capacity in the CAISO showing some of our dashboards as part of the eCommerce Platinum Plus package. It’s stunning that the solar capacity (Behind the Meter (BTM) and Utility) has reached 40 GW in CAISO, up from 24 GW in January 2019. The amount of capacity additions in 2023 was a record and now with reporting only through October 2024 we expect 2024 annual capacity additions to set a new high in the WECC. Figure 1 | WECC Capacity Additions Figure 1 above shows historical capacity additions by fuel type across the WECC taken from the October 2024 EIA 860 which was ... » read more | |