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| Thursday Oct 23, 2025 | |
| As we enter the final stretch of October, we are in the midst of several transitionary periods. Along both coasts, in both the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast temperatures are dropping as Mother Nature brings nighttime chill to the table (especially in the Northeast where the expected cold for the weekend and early next week has deepened progressively in the forecast over the course of the week). Another transitionary point is here as the fall maintenance season is reaching (or has already reached) its zenith in many power markets and the generation outages that have been building over the past 6 weeks or more are now on the decline, bringing the needed capacity back to the supply stack in advance of the real winter cold. Figure 1 | Total US Nuclear Plant Outage ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 22, 2025 | |
| With increased use of renewable energy, comes an increased need for flexible resources like batteries. Wind and solar provide power without the burning of fossil fuels, helping to reduce carbon emissions. The drawback is their generation is dependent on Mother Nature’s whims. The sun’s path is set while wind generation is variable. During the summer, demand usually peaks in the evening hours, but the solar and wind profile is rarely perfectly shaped to match it. Batteries are well-suited to make up for this mismatch in timing between renewable supply and energy demand. They can charge in the middle of the day when solar generation is abundant and discharge in the evening peak when demand is high. Increasingly in the last several years, battery fleets in CAISO and ERCOT have ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 21, 2025 | |
| As we head into the 2025–26 winter season, all eyes are on the Pacific, where ocean temperatures are cooling and signaling the potential return of La Niña—though this time in a weaker, shorter-lived form. Forecasters estimate roughly a 70 percent chance of La Niña conditions developing by late fall, which could shape everything from heavier snowfall in the Pacific Northwest to drier conditions across the southern United States. While this pattern may not pack the punch of stronger La Niña years, even a modest cooling phase can tilt the odds toward a chillier, stormier setup in the north and a warmer, drier one in the south—setting the stage for a season that’s anything but predictable. However, colder temperatures are not yet in sight for ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 20, 2025 | |
| Here in the PNW, the weather has begun to turn sour, and, relatedly, beer-drinkers have made the switch from lagers to IPAs. Although many celebrate the start of fall weather, my electricity bill does not agree. In the weather forecast, we see low temperatures growing increasingly uncomfortable across the region. For Spokane, away from the coast, we even see potential for frost. Figure 1 | Pacific Northwest Weather Forecasts Crisp days and chilly nights call for some kind of heating. My heat is electric, but natural gas remains widespread across the region, especially in older buildings as well as those close to major gas pipelines. Unlike electricity-driven heat pumps, or a combination of radiators and window ACs, gas-powered heating generally turns off in the winter and starts to ramp ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 17, 2025 | |
| Load growth! Everyone is talking about it. And nobody knows what it is actually going to be. And for the first time in a generation, we have to deal with vast uncertainties. For the last three decades the topic of demand growth was boring – will it be 0.6% or 0.8%. Changes in demand could barely be teased apart from year-to-year variability in weather. And now? Boom, it’s all anyone can talk about. One source of demand forecasts comes from the FERC 714 data. This is self-reported demand forecast for each utility. Utilities are required to file this data with FERC, and the quality is, shall we say, variable. The graph below shows annual load growth rates for Pacific Northwest balancing authorities and utilities, as reported in recent FERC 714 filings. Table 1 | Demand Growth ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 16, 2025 | |
| Every October is an exciting time for those of us at Energy GPS who are hydro fanatics. Summer white-water rafting trips throughout Northwest are behind us and our focus shifts to the new water year and calibrating expectations and evaluating current conditions for the coming 12 months. Some of our followers will have attended our recent free webinar earlier this week on that very topic. There are a lot of moving parts to wrap one’s head around at the start of a new water year: currently we have a seasonal water supply forecast for January through July sitting at 91.7 MAF, or 88% of the 30-year “normal”. For the nearer future, the forecast for Q3 has October continuing to dry out (notwithstanding the recent rainfall) to 70% of average, while ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 15, 2025 | |
| Here in the Pacific Northwest, the signs of fall are getting harder to ignore. There’s a brisk chill in the air, made more biting by breezes carrying orange and red leaves. Pumpkins line doorsteps and plastic tombstones adorn lawns. Another telltale sign of the season is the growing level of nuclear outages across the country. As of the 12th, the total number in the US has exceeded 20 GW. It’s part of a larger “outage season” when power plants across the country take advantage of the lower demand levels to do some much-needed maintenance work. For nuclear plants, most of their maintenance occurs on a strict schedule, once every 18 or 24 months. At Energy GPS, we track these cycles along with other unplanned nuclear outages in our NRC Nuclear dashboards. Figure 1 | ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 14, 2025 | |
| As we’ve discussed in previous power market updates, just as the fall season brings a sense of calm in everyday life, it also ushers in moderation in the power sector. Demand typically weakens, making autumn the time when generators that ran overtime during the summer can undergo needed maintenance. This year’s shoulder season in SPP has been relatively calm. Grid conditions have remained stable, and outage levels are in line with typical norms—unlike the spring shoulder season observed this year, when SPP saw a robust volume of generators offline for maintenance. Typically, outage-related capacity losses peak in mid- to late October during the fall period, before units return online in November as colder weather drives demand upward. Outage levels are forecast to remain ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 13, 2025 | |
| Over the past decade, LNG conversation has taken a stronghold in the natural gas sector. As it stands currently, the latest Lower 48 facility addition has been Plaquemines while North America is watching what is going on in Western Canada as LNG Canada has started the process of bringing on its second train. Figure 1 | Plaquemines LNG Natural Gas Nominations – Daily and Year on Year Comparison The additions listed above place the LNG component as the largest growth area in the natural gas space where the weekend saw the Lower 48 tap the 16.6 BCF level while Cove Point (.7 BCF/d) is offline due to its annual maintenance. Sabine is the oldest on the fleet tied to the Gulf Coast but it has increased its offtake over the past few weeks as the recent days fell in the 4.6 to 4.7 BCF/d ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 10, 2025 | |
| On Tuesday Energy GPS will be hosting a webinar, titled 'Kicking off the 2026 Water Year'. It is free to register at this link. Among the many topics we may touch upon is the potential impact of La Nina conditions on volume runoff in the Columbiar River Basin. On the second Thursday of each month the Climate Prediction Center publishes an updated El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index value. A negative value indicates cooler than average sea surface temperatures in the eastern-central equatorial Pacific Ocean and stronger than normal easterly winds. This is known as a La Nina condition. There is a significant (although far from perfect!) relationship between La Nina conditions and weather in the western United States. In particular, La Nina conditions are correlated with higher than ... » read more | |