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| Wednesday Sep 3, 2025 | |
| Labor Day weekend is officially behind us, marking the unofficial end to summer. Students are back in the classroom and Halloween decorations are already filling up store shelves. The next few weeks will be a transition period with weather gradually cooling down and leaves gradually turning color. For US energy grids, it’ll be a transition into shoulder months and the start of outage season. Nuclear outages remain small for now, totaling just under 1.2 GW yesterday. The table below is featured in our NRC Nuclear Change Dashboard. Just nine plants are experiencing partial outages. However, more than 20 plants are expected to come offline for refueling in the coming months. A few plants, including Catawba 2 in South Carolina and North Anna 1 in Virginia, have already started slowing ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 29, 2025 | |
| Everyone is talking about the cold weather pattern swooping down from Canada and smothering the Upper Midwest, through the Ohio Valley and tapping the Northeast. Looking at the jet stream pattern and where the low and high pressure systems hit, the upcoming 3-7 day forecast has cooler weather moving down into the South Central region as after tomorrow, cities like Dallas, TX are looking at highs in the mid-80's over the long holiday weekend. Figure 1 | Texas Average Temperatures – Actual and Forecast This is atypically cool for the end of the month of August, and it is translating into lower demand (and, as we discussed in our most recent South Central Market Flash, lower power burns). In Texas, it is also showing up in the form of lower solar generation, thanks to the cloud ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 28, 2025 | |
| The late spring and early summer was characterized by a cycle of warm weather starting in the Midwest and moving eastward over the course of several days, traveling through PJM and the rest of the Northeast until reaching the East coast, only to recede and start the cycle again later. In fact, it has been the Midwest and Northeast that has been the focus for warmth and demand this summer. But this pattern slowed during August and now with September just a few days away the future looks markedly different. Most of the East appears to be leaving the summer behind, with the last block of hot weather now more than ten days in the past, and the forecast showing nothing but mild conditions moving forward to the end of the month and through the first third of September. Demand ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Aug 27, 2025 | |
| In our last Wednesday blog, we discussed the relative mildness of summer 2025 as compared to summer 2024 in Alberta. Only pockets of heat had broken through and caused periods of price volatility. This week, however, is proving summer is not over yet as heat is blanketing the province. The figure below features a temperature forecast from Atmospheric G2 with red indicating above-normal temperatures. The current heat wave began over the weekend and is expected to last through the first week of September. Highs in Calgary are expected to reach the mid-80s. Figure 1 | Atmospheric G2’s AESO and Calgary Temperature Forecast The heat is putting pressure on the demand forecast; peak demand reached 11.8 GW last night and is expected to do so again on Wednesday and Thursday nights. At the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Aug 26, 2025 | |
| The natural gas market is driven by three core dynamics: supply, demand, and pipeline transport capacity. Supply reflects the volume of gas produced and available for delivery, while demand depends on factors such as power generation needs, industrial activity, residential consumption, and weather-driven heating or cooling requirements. Pipeline transport capacity serves as the critical link between production and consumption regions, dictating how efficiently gas can move to where it is needed most. When production exceeds demand but pipeline bottlenecks limit delivery, localized oversupply can suppress cash prices. Conversely, strong demand in constrained markets can push prices higher. Together, these elements interact daily to influence regional price volatility and shape the balance ... » read more | |
| Monday Aug 25, 2025 | |
| Towards the end of last week, Mother Nature delivered the most extreme conditions of the summer to date to the CAISO grid. Friday afternoon saw Los Angles hit a high of 94 and neighboring Phoenix up to 110 degrees. For coastal California, this was something of a shock to the system after a comparatively mild summer. Off the coast temperatures were well below their all-time high but extreme for this late in the season. In this blog we dive into the response from power markets and how they coped with the heat. Figure 1 | CAISO Net Load Actuals & Forecast (MW) The figure above shows CAISO’s hourly profile for load, net load, solar, and wind generation. The end of last week put the greatest demand on the grid yet this year, with load in excess of 42 GWs. The greatest hurdle for the ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 22, 2025 | |
| Here at Energy GPS, we commit a lot of effort to understanding and explaining the buildout of generation and storage resources in ERCOT. Just this past week we published articles including “Everything is Bigger in Texas” highlighting solar and battery past and forecast growth, and “ERCOT Win(d)less Streak” noting the diminished wind profile forecast in the upcoming days. (This second article should get a special shoutout for its notable pun and wordplay in its title.) But while developers bring on new resources to meet a growing demand, large customers can make less dramatic actions that bring about a similar goal of balancing the grid. Specifically, they can adjust or curtail operations to minimize demand during the highest demand ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 21, 2025 | |
| In the energy space, Texas is known for its rich oil fields and natural gas infrastructure, where some of the largest pipelines have been built to move volume from West Texas and the Panhandle to demand regions such as the Desert Southwest, California and the eastern side of the state. Over the past couple of decades, the Lone Star State has entered the renewable energy space in a major way by adding wind and solar farms, along with flexible battery capacity to a point that Texas renewables rival any market in the country. The regional landscape was ripe for wind turbines to be placed in West Texas with an easy transition into ERCOT’s North and South regions as the technology and understanding of wind patterns evolved. The sun was the next resource to start harvesting as the supply ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Aug 20, 2025 | |
| Temperatures in Alberta this summer have mostly come in below normal with only pockets of heat. The figure below shows actual average Alberta temperatures, as well as the difference from normal. Orange shows above-normal temperatures while blue shows below-normal temperatures. The last two weekends were hot spots with highs over 80 degrees F. With the heat has come extra demand, surpassing forecasts and causing real-time price volatility. Figure 1 | Average Alberta Temperatures and Differences from Normal (Jul – Aug 2025) The heat this summer has been sporadic, a welcome relief after last summer’s relentless heat and wildfires. The figure plots average Alberta load against average Calgary temperatures in July and August going back to 2023. This year’s data is in ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Aug 19, 2025 | |
| One story we continue to tune into this summer is that of CAISO’s battery fleet. All signs pointed to strong capacity growth at the onset of summer, and now tight conditions have brought us another round of records. Unlike other resources, batteries act at times like an electricity sink and at others as a source of supply. So, there are two new records to watch out for, one in the midday charging hours and another in the peak of the evening ramp. Figure 1 | Record Battery Charge and Output Over Time Our first figure shows two related records for CAISO’s battery fleet: hourly output and daily charge. The blue line above shows the maximum value for MWs taken off the grid in a single day at any given date. The orange line shows record battery output in a single hour over time. » read more | |