Featured Articles
| Wednesday Apr 10, 2019 | |
| If you live in the Midwest, you are scrabbling to get your sleds back out of the garage attic as Mother Nature is preparing to drop its second 'bomb cyclone' throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin and other states in the region. This type of weather patter occurred around last year at this time as the Lower 48 was in the midst of one of the coldest April months on record. Figure 1 | Mother Nature and her 'Bomb Cyclone' In fact, some forecasters are calling for up to 30 inches of snow in parts of Wisconsin just east of Minneapolis. This should continue to create flash flooding within the region so once the sleds are put away after this week for the final time, it will be time to take out the paddle board or canoe. Speaking of weather and sledding, if you have ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 9, 2019 | |
| Canada has had a history of reliable natural gas supply to the United States. Much of the natural gas infrastructure north of the border is specifically designed to take advantage of the well developed markets in the States. It was just two summers ago when the pipeline flows set a new record but this year will be very different. There are a number of factors that have turned the tide and should drop the net flows at almost every major interface. Over the next seven months the drop in volume will have a net effect of over 100 BCF on the US Supply/Demand balancing compared to last year's totals. Figure 1 | Total Net Pipeline Flows from Canada to the Lower 48 There are a number of factors and challenges that will shift the pipeline supply. Some of these are structural ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 8, 2019 | |
| The end of March and the beginning of April is a time when baseball migrates from Spring Training to that of filling the major league ballparks for opening day. The season represents that spring is officially here and that it will not be long before school is out and summer is upon us. if you grew up around baseball, it is time to bring the gloves out and throw the ball around prior to watching your team play. If you get the chance to take in a Milwaukee Brewers game, allocate a couple of hours prior to the game so you can enjoy the tailgating festivities. It is like no other in all of baseball. Yes, there are teams with deeper history and championships, but the memories as a kid go beyond the World Series as it is a time to throw on that jersey of your ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 5, 2019 | |
| Earlier in the week, TETCO posted an EBB notice that the force majeure initiated on January 21 has been lifted immediately. Back when the rupture happened, the pipeline cut southbound capacity from the Berne compressor by .6 down to 1.6 BCF. I just checked the capacity posting on the pipe and they have already moved the rating back up to 2.2 BCF. Flows are still nominated at 1.6 BCF. Figure 1 | TETCO EBB Notice Posted April 2 Even with the most recent cash basis postings from Dominion South to Henry Hub printing in the minus 25 cent range, we should see the full capacity of this pipe get utilized as we roll into the second week of April. That would be a .6 BCF diversion from the DTI storage complex. Figure 2 | TETCO Southbound Nominations for April ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 4, 2019 | |
| The weather throughout New York has stayed in a relatively comfortable range after the cold spurt at the beginning of March. Generation saw these low demand level as a good time to go offline with both the Nine Mile Point 2 and the Indian Point 3 nuclear units taking refueling outages. However, it appears that complications arose at Indian Point as unit 2 also tripped offline. With conspicuous timing, the unit began to ramp back up on April 1st. The following day output continued to increase throughout the morning, but it tripped back offline midday despite an appearance in the day ahead market for April 3rd. While surely not intended as a joke, the blip on the radar had many thinking that the generator would finally make its way back online. Taking a look at Figure 1, we can see the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 3, 2019 | |
| When you think of California, the beaches, Hollywood, Disneyland and Alcatraz all come to mind. If you have ever visited the state, rented a car and drove through Los Angeles or San Diego on I-5 during rush hour, you quickly have images of congested highways and horns honking as you figure out which exit to take. If you have the pleasure of talking to a local commuter and hear the drive time stories, you really understand how bad the congestion can get at times. Figure 1 | California's Congested Highways The congestion image above is a good visualization of what it is like on any given day inside the Golden State. it also gives you a visualization of what the CAISO power grid looks like when there is to much energy pointed down a transmission line and ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 2, 2019 | |
| The Lower 48 storage deficit gets a lot of attention. This week's EIA inventory report will likely post an end of season number of 1.08 TCF which will be a five year low for gas storage. But just to the north of the United States they are feeling their own woes. Just like the United States they have seen their own boon in natural gas production. But thanks to build outs in oil sands processing and natural gas fired generation the increase in demand has kept pace with the production increases. After a number of years fighting pipeline maintenance and a recent cold end to this winter season Canada's storage inventory has dropped to a five year low. Alberta inventory is down to just 204 BCF and the Dawn cavern in Ontario is down to 25 BCF. The two caverns have 587 BCF of capacity ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 1, 2019 | |
| We are entering the time of year when the California renewable output starts to climb as the weather moves from the winter overcast skies to that of sunny and daytime highs in the low 90's. If you believe in the 2 GW capacity increase per year (tied to the Renewable Procurement Standard - RPS) and the fact that the CAISO grid has seen the grid peak out at 10.8 GW already we will be looking at a 12.GW peak output sometime in Q2-2019. Figure 1 | CAISO Solar Breakdown - Monthly The top pane in Figure 1 calculates the month capacity factor (CF) for the utility-scaled solar generation within the CAISO footprint. The bottom pane represents the two parts of the CF with the line representing the cumulative peak generation (potential - actual plus curtailed) while the bars represent ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 29, 2019 | |
| With the end of March this weekend, the 2018-19 winter strip is going to be in the books and all eyes will be on summer 2019. As it stands right now, we will be entering the injection season at the 1.1 TCF storage level across the Lower 48. The utility storage operators will be doing the math from the current levels they are at to where they want to be come late October and start to march toward that goal by the middle of April and keep it going through the summer. Th merchant storage operators will be accessing what Mother Nature has in store for the Lower 48 this upcoming Q3 (July-Sept) as the power demand level will be a key driver to the overall power burns on the grid. Figure 1 | Lower 48 Daily Power Burns The graph above depicts the daily power burns across the ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 28, 2019 | |
| I recently came across a report that stated PJM coal capacity was in danger of being retired in favor of wind and solar. The article had some great charts and an interesting analysis on the economics of wind and solar. However, the article downplayed the lack of reliability of the renewable fuel mix. To their credit, they did mention that coal was able to be dispatched unlike renewable resources but did not go much further than that. While it was a fairly interesting read, I don’t quite think that coal is going to be giving up much ground to renewable resources in the near future. Figure 1 | Energy Innovation’s Coal vs Renewables Cost Perhaps the most important factor is that wind and solar are intermittent resources. Both of these Renewables cannot be easily controlled in ... » read more | |
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