Featured Articles
Tuesday May 16, 2017 | |
Starting today, the eastern half of the United States will see its first taste of hot weather. From Chicago over to the I-95 corridor and down to the Southeast, daytime highs will move up 8-15 degrees above normal. Overnight lows across the Midwest and East are moving up to the low 70's which will bring cooling demand around the clock. From today into Thursday, the PJM ... » read more | |
Monday May 15, 2017 | |
Entering the weekend, all the stars were aligned for renewable curtailments to exist. The first element is tied to the load schedules shifting down with cooler temperatures as well as it being a Saturday and Sunday profile. Figure 1 | CAISO Load Day-Ahead Schedules - Hourly ... » read more | |
Friday May 12, 2017 | |
Word broke this week that Calpine is actively looking for a buyer. The Wall Street Journal provided the following summary of the situation: “The Houston company, which owns 80 power plants and has a so-called enterprise value of more than $16 billion, is working with investment bankers at Lazard to sound out possible buyers ... » read more | |
Thursday May 11, 2017 | |
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issues a report every week that breaks down the open interest of the natural gas market by participant category. The intent of the report is to make sure no one group of traders has an undue influence on price in an effort to keep an orderly outcome. From the CFTC posting, we can gather plenty of information about total size of the ... » read more | |
Wednesday May 10, 2017 | |
Followers of the CAISO market or readers of this newsletter will be well aware of the issues surrounding California's large renewable generation portfolio which has occasionally driven negative price over DA HL hours. The negative prices typically clear through the middle of the day as solar generation ramps in. April saw multiple negative clears as shoulder ... » read more | |
Tuesday May 9, 2017 | |
Yesterday, EnergyGPS released over 50 pages of in-depth analysis on what is going on regarding Renewable Curtailments within the CAISO footprint. The first section breaks down how we have evolved to this point. It includes a little background on California's RPS and how the renewable growth has taken shape over the years. We also take a look at the Pacific ... » read more | |
Monday May 8, 2017 | |
The old adage of "April Showers, bring May Flowers" can we altered a little the past two month in the South Central region. It would go more like this, "March/April Wind, bring plenty of Generation to the grid". This has been the case in both SPP and ERCOT throughout the months of March and April. Before we get deep into the data, let us ... » read more | |
Friday May 5, 2017 | |
Last week I took a raft trip down the Owyhee River. The Owyhee is one of the most beautiful and remote rivers in Oregon. The headwaters of the Owyhee are located in Nevada. The river winds its way through southeastern Oregon before dumping into the Snake River along the Idaho-Oregon border. The ... » read more | |
Thursday May 4, 2017 | |
As I sit here and write this newsletter, the skies across Portland are clear blue and the temperature outside is 78 degrees!! We have not seen this type of weather in some time as the overall winter season has been quite cold and the current spring days have been below normal. This has kept both the rescom and power demand profiles above normal for this time of ... » read more | |
Wednesday May 3, 2017 | |
Looking at Power Burns recently we noticed what appears to be sharp shift over the last week compared to earlier in the month. With warm temperatures across the East and South Central region an increase in cooling demand was to be expected. Digging a little deeper, there is a larger story to tell. Figure 1 breaks down the last 30 days of power burns by net load ... » read more |