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| Tuesday Jun 5, 2018 | |
| Natural gas balancing has seen quite a few supply/ demand changes this year. The winter started off with a bang when the EIA posted a record draw for the first week. By the time we moved into the month of February the cash values around the country were back down below the price of coal forcing gas fired generation to adjust their dispatch. The reduced gas prices relative to stronger coal pricing forced up power burns. March and April had record heating degree days in the Plains which caused ResCom demand to jump up to all-time highs. More recently, spring has been reduced to a two week event as above normal temperatures have driven up the cooling load across the Lower 48. Most would have thought that demand side shocks like what we have experienced would lead to some price ... » read more | |
| Monday Jun 4, 2018 | |
| This is the time of year when various commissions come out with their assessment of the electricity and natural gas grid's ability to meet peak load for the upcoming summer. A week ago the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) put out their 2018 Summer Reliability Assessment. A week prior to that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) put out their Summer 2018 Energy Market and Reliability Assessment. A week prior to that the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) put out their 2018 Summer Loads & Resources Assessment. Just a couple days prior to the CAISO's report was the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) putting out their Aliso Canyon Risk Assessment Technical Report Summer 2018. In general these reports ... » read more | |
| Friday Jun 1, 2018 | |
| While Memorial Day weekend was near perfect temperatures here in the Pacific Northwest, the same cannot be said about our neighbors in the Midwest. A heat wave swept through the Central US just in time for the holiday which made any BBQ plans significantly less comfortable. Highs reached up into the mid-90's for South Dakota and Wisconsin while parts of Minnesota triple digits. Looking at the chart below, we can see a white (pinkish) hot cloud covering a majority of the Midwest. Figure 1 | ConUS Temperature Anomaly Memorial Day 5/28/2018 Moving over to the power market, the heat had a significant impact on power loads across the MISO footprint; therefore the zonal pricing was of interest as the auction cleared. The unassuming state of Minnesota usually falls as one of ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 31, 2018 | |
| Earlier in the month was the first leg of the triple crown, known as the Kentucky Derby. This traditional horse race weekend ranks right up there with the top sporting events that should be included on your bucket list of events to attend. The weekend would be more enjoyable if you were to bet on the race itself with a trifecta bet as it usually pays out well. The Trifecta bet is when you pick the top three finishers in a specific race in the correct order. The winning ticket holders are seen celebrating as they go and cash in their prize. Figure 1 | The Trifecta Winner If you do not care about the order in which the three horses place in a specific race, you can make a bet called the Trifecta Box, which has a different payout structure as you are just trying to note ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 30, 2018 | |
| A few articles hit our inbox yesterday morning stating that four wild fires last summer were caused by PG&E power lines. In three instances it was concluded that PG&E violated state laws regarding vegetation management which ultimately resulted in fires and the utility may face fines as result. It wasn't all bad news for PG&E as the investigation by Cal Fire concluded that the largest of the four (8,400 acre La Porte fire) was started when a tree branch fell on a PG&E power lines, however the utility did not violate any laws in this instance and was not found at fault for the blaze. To keep this in perspective, this was is relation to just 4 of the 170 fires which Cal Fire is investigating. The announcement comes on the heals of the announcement that ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 29, 2018 | |
| Alliance Pipeline went out with an Open Season on March 25th for .4 BCF per day of additional capacity into the Chicago Citygate. The pipeline has access to two of the most prolific production basins in the world with Bakken and the Alberta Foothills along the path. That is why we believe this additional compression will be heavily subscribed on tomorrows closing date. Since both regions are subject to fair shipper rules for pipeline management, both must be allotted appropriate opportunity to sign any available space. That is it why it is very possible to have Canadian natural gas producers get prompted out of the additional opportunity to serve the lucrative Midwest market. The current abundance of associated gas coming out of North Dakota needs a home and this is an opportune ... » read more | |
| Friday May 25, 2018 | |
| The real topic of this newsletter is the recent PJM capacity auction results which were just published this week. We'll get to that in a minute. These PJM capacity results came across my radar at a time when a few other things are going on in the market and the policy arena. Capacity markets have been on my mind. Two weeks ago the CPUC published its Green Book outlining some of the challenges that lie ahead in the rapidly evolving California electricity markets. The CPUC is worried about supply shortages (we wrote about that report two weeks ago). Last week I attended the "2nd Annual Northwest Power Markets" conference where a lot of topics were covered, including the need for better WECC capacity markets. Then this week we have seen spot prices in ERCOT shooting ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 24, 2018 | |
| When taking the size of the market into account, SPP currently holds the largest proportion of wind in the United States. As the region's renewable portfolio grew, the grid's transmission grid could not keep up as bottlenecks (congestion) started to show up and/or there was just too much supply on the grid that curtailments were inevitable. We discussed such events in one of our Newsletters a couple of weeks ago titled 'SPP Weekend Update'. Once curtailments were a common thing within SPP, the ISO began publishing curtailment data in October 2017. This data told us a lot about the grids make-up at the time as we initially saw a significant portion of wind generation being curtailed. The market just couldn’t handle the amount of wind resulting in up to 2 GW of ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 23, 2018 | |
| Competitive Power Ventures' (CPV) Towntic power plant has entered the ISONE Day-Ahead market for the first time this week. The 785 MW gas fired combined cycle plant located in Oxford Connecticut was slated to come online 6/1 but appears to have entered the DA at near full capacity for Monday,Tuesday and Wednesday this week (it should be noted that we have discussed this topic extensively in our Northeast Power Package that covers the ISONE, NYISO and PJM markets). We discussed what Competitive Power Ventures has in store in the coming months in the the Newsletter Blog titled 'The New Kids on the Block'. Figure 1 | CPV Towantic Energy Center ISONE has updated their interconnect queue and moved the operational start date to the 21st however the gas noms and power ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 22, 2018 | |
| Late last week the California Public utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a draft proposal to once again inject natural gas into the beleaguered Aliso Canyon storage facility. As you may remember the cavern suffered a catastrophic failure in October of 2015 which allowed 4.6 BCF of inventory to escape into the atmosphere. The surrounding communities were evacuated as a result and more than 6,000 families had to find temporary shelter. This latest disaster follows other recent events like the PG&E-San Bruno Explosion and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station leak which have created a rift of mistrust between state residents and its own investor owned utilities. Consequentially, the State Legislature passed SB 380 which put a moratorium on gas injections at the site until it ... » read more | |