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| Friday Mar 10, 2023 | |
| Author: Andrew Kasius When I was younger, I spent many formative years delivering morning newspapers. I’d sling that bag over my shoulder, stuff my bike baskets, day in and day out, and head into the dark and cold and deliver the news. And then, at week’s end, go collecting my route and get my well-earned $1.25! In retrospect, although this feels like it was Dickensian-esque child labor, I remain partial and loyal to local news providers. Figure 1| Newspaper Boy with Schwinn Stingray, Banana Seat and Baskets One recent story, local to where I live, caught my eye that I wanted to share with our readers. On a local level, it’s a significant economic development story and on the regional and national level, it highlights the challenges ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 9, 2023 | |
| The state of California is one of the primary pioneers of renewable energy in the United States. We are used to analyzing and discussing CAISO renewables regularly, but in California our discussions of renewables tend to revolve around solar and wind with a combined penetration level of over one-third (i.e. wind and solar generation accounts for over one-third of all annual load in CAISO), along with the swiftly rising battery storage component of the CAISO supply stack. This winter the conversation has changed to push another renewable resource in California to the forefront—hydro power. We delved into each renewable component in our latest Renewable Monthly Newsletter, “February 2023 – East/West Divide”. California and the West experienced a ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 8, 2023 | |
| Punxsutawney Phil is the official groundhog in Pennsylvania, determining whether six more weeks of winter remain, or an early spring is on the way each February. While several other groundhogs on the East Coast have popped up over the years, Phil’s followers claim him as the true predictor for the Northeast despite a less than stellar track record. This year he saw his shadow, meaning six more weeks of winter for the Northeast. The West Coast doesn’t have any groundhogs to rely on for weather forecasting, so Oregon turns to their official state animal: the beaver. Stumptown Fil, also known as Filbert the beaver, made his yearly prediction this Groundhog’s Day at the Oregon Zoo. Rather than using his shadow, Fil picks his favorite stick with a note tied around the top. He ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 7, 2023 | |
| The end of the natural gas withdrawal season is just weeks away and it is likely that the Lower 48 inventory will end neat 1.9 TCF. That is a surplus over last year’s levels of approximately 500 BCF and puts the end of the injection season on the path to 4 TCF which would be one of the highest refill totals over the past 25 years. There have been plenty of factors that has helped the Lower 48 inventory recover from last spring's inventory levels including a very warm winter and natural gas production gains. But none was bigger than the Freeport LNG rupture from last spring where the liquefaction site kept 2 BCF per day in the Gulf Coast region (record high level of inventory at the beginning of March). Under such conditions in the Lower 48, our neighbors to the found themselves not ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 6, 2023 | |
| SoCal Gas posted the following notice late last week pertaining to the L235 unplanned maintenance issue that showed up a couple of weeks ago. Figure 1 | SoCal Maintenance Notice - L235 As a result of an inline inspection, safety related conditions were identified on Line 235 that necessitated a pressure reduction. Accordingly, on February 16, 2023, the operating capacity of the North Needles Subzone was reduced by 800 MMcf per day, the operating capacity of the North Desert Zone was reduced by 280 MMcf per day, and the operating capacity of the Kramer Junction Subzone was increased by 70 MMcf per day. Validation and remediation activities are ongoing. The preliminary expected completion date of the Line 235 remediation work is March 17, 2023. This preliminary timeline is based on current ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 3, 2023 | |
| From 2019 to 2022, the ERCOT solar market share grew from 1% to 5.5%, and its impact on ERCOT’s previously nonexistent “duck curve” is starting to become apparent. The duck curve is a phenomenon that’s particularly prominent in CAISO, where solar is in excess of 30% of the market share (this metric includes behind-the-meter). Figure 1 | ERCOT Solar Breakdown - Monthly Looking at the graph above, the top pane represents the 'capacity factor' which takes the monthly average generation and divides it by the cumulative potential capacity that is in play within ERCOT. The two components mentioned are on display in the second pane with the blue bars tied to the former while the orange line represents the latter. There is definite growth on display starting in the ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 2, 2023 | |
| Things are changing quickly for the Pacific Northwest Hydro system, with the signs all pointing to an increasingly dire situation for the month of March and into the spring. After a mixed experience over the month of February that included very low levels of precipitation in central Oregon and Washington as well as much of southern Idaho but also some much-needed rain and snowfall up in the higher elevations in British Columbia and the Upper Snake, the outlook is dry for the first 10 days of March. Even with the pockets of strong precipitation high in the system, river flows through the month of February were quite limited, keeping generation quite modest. The figure below shows precipitation for the month of February in the left-hand pane, while the right-hand pane ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 1, 2023 | |
| The cold winter days in Southern California are offering a unique opportunity for SP15 batteries, but the fleet doesn’t seem to be taking the bait. As we saw at the end of the fourth quarter in 2022, blue in the forecast often translates to higher heating demand and higher prices for the morning ramp. We covered how batteries responded in November to the morning price peaks in ‘Batteries and the November Blues’. Now Southern California is facing a 15-day forecast awash with below-normal temperatures through the beginning of March after an unusually wintery weekend with snow falling in LA. The trend of higher SP15 real-time morning prices is present, sometimes even surpassing evening peak prices. With the ongoing cold, the trend looks to continue. In this article ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Feb 28, 2023 | |
| One year ago the Lower 48 natural gas storage situation was vastly different than what has developed this year. The inventory ended the winter season at 1.6 TCF which was below the historical average. But because of the lack of production growth, demand gains and the pull of LNG exports the forecasted inventory for the end of the 2022 injection season was at a historical low of only 3.25 TCF. Along the way to filling last summer a number of changes occurred including the Freeport shut down which backed 2 BCF per day into the storage balancing. From the date of rupture to the end of the injection season the balancing was positively affected by a total of 270 BCF allowing the end of season to end up at 3.6 TCF. This year the inventory does not need a Freeport Hail Mary to have adequate ... » read more | |
| Monday Feb 27, 2023 | |
| The colder weather pattern hit Southern California over the weekend as snow flurries were reported in counties that have not seen such in decades. In the Pacific Northwest, Portland folk woke up to 18-degree temperatures to which is a record for this time of year while Seattle was a few degrees colder. Looking down the Columbia River Gorge, La Grange showed an overnight low of 9 degrees with a high tapping 21 degrees. Watching the local news, the meteorologists described what is in store Sunday morning of which ended up being summarized with 1-4 inches of new snow with the coastal region getting 6-8 inches while inland is not going to see much when it comes to flurries but will remain quite cold. Figure 1 | Atmospheric G2 NWPP ... » read more | |
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