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| Tuesday Apr 2, 2024 | |
| The ingredients are simple when it comes to MISO soup as some of the best out there combines the broth with small pieces of tofu, seaweed, and a few thinly sliced scallions. Served hot as a precursor to a couple of your favorite sushi rolls makes going out to dinner a simple pleasure in almost any city. Figure 1 | MISO Soup and Net Load Ingredients In the energy sector, the simple ingredients to the ‘net load’ are just as simple as MISO soup as the base (broth) is the power demand profile that is anchored throughout any region by the consumption of electricity via residential, commercial, and industrial entities. The broth can be a bit salty at times or the paste utilized by some can taste a little flat if it has been sitting there for a few hours. The added ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 1, 2024 | |
| California gets another round of storms, which means more flooding in Southern California while the snowpack levels rose in the Sierra Mountains. Reading the headlines Sunday morning, the Golden State is feeling Mother Nature’s wrath as a portion of Hwy 1 washed out and the iconic highway looking over the Pacific Ocean will be out of commission once again. Figure 1 | Renewables and the Storms Down in Southern California, any spring breakers who thought the sunny destination tied to San Diego over to Palm Spring and hooked into the Phoenix area had another thing coming as the precipitation pattern was relentless starting late Friday night and still going into Sunday afternoon. The impact to the state’s water year was detailed in the EnergyGPS West Hydro Market ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 28, 2024 | |
| Coming on the heels of a massive water year last year, this spring the hydro situation in California is not quite as overwhelming as it was in 2023, but still looks very healthy with robust generation currently in effect, on top of strong hydro storage reserves and snowpack. The state has not come close to matching last spring’s record-setting snow accumulation, but total snow water equivalent is currently above average at 26.5 inches and is building again after a brief period of melt from mid-March through Friday of last week on the 22nd. For the last two months, CAISO hydro generation has exceeded last year, by 600 MW in February (averaging 2.5 GW) and 100 MW for the month of March to date (at just over 3 GW). Figure 1 | Monthly Average CAISO Total Hydro Generation ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 27, 2024 | |
| Two weeks ago in this blog, we wrote about the nuclear outages during spring maintenance season lagging behind previous years. However, our nuclear outage forecast had the outage total springing up in the last half of March which is exactly what we’ve seen. The figure below is featured in our daily NRC Nuclear Plant Summary report and shows outage levels year-on-year back to 2019 as well as our estimated forecast line. Note our forecast line only includes planned refueling outages and current unplanned outages. When we wrote our last blog, this year’s outages came in below 2022 and 2023 levels by more than 4 GW. As of March 26th, this year leads 2022 by 2.5 GW and last year by more than 4 GW. Yesterday’s total nuclear outages surpassed 16.7 GW with a peak expected later ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 25, 2024 | |
| The slogan ‘Message in a Bottle’ came about by someone placing a message they wrote into a container that was shaped like a bottle where it was sealed and throwing into the water. The goal was for the natural currents to take the message to far away parts with the hope that someone would find it, open the container, and read the message. In 1999, the slogan was made into a romantic film starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright-Penn where a writer (Theresa-Robin) falls in love with a shipbuilder (Garrett – Kevin) after finding a bottle with letters in them on the sandy beaches of Cape Cod. Figure 1 | Message/Winter in a Bottle The last week of March 2024 does not entail a romantic love story if you reside in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic or the Northeast as Mother ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 22, 2024 | |
| The Easter Bunny will be hiding all the eggs here soon where the little ones will be running around the backyard with their decorative baskets looking for the treasures inside. Many times it is their favorite candy while some of the eggs, when opened carry with them coins or dollar bills. Figure 1 | Easter Egg Baskets There are times during the gathering of eggs where parents need to get involved due to the age of the children as the older ones are racing around grabbing everything in sight while the younger one’s basket is nearly empty. The parent’s understand that if ‘all the eggs are in one basket’, it will end up with some sadness on a day that is suppose to bring joy to everyone as it officially kicks off spring. A safer bet is ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 21, 2024 | |
| The ERCOT market continues to present opportunities for flexible generation such as peakers and the newly minted battery fleet. This was evident during the summer months when power demand was breaking records all the while the wind/solar generation was eating away at the midday net load volume. The discussions around adding peakers is being addressed and spoken at every conference while the battery technology continue to see the costs unwind and the processing of getting capacity to the grid a focal point by all. Figure 1 | ERCOT Battery Fleet – Hourly Profile Summary We track the ERCOT battery fleet economic and revenue streams in the ERCOT Daily Dashboard (sample) that is part of the EnergyGPS eCommerce Platinum Plus Package we offer to interested parties via our ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 20, 2024 | |
| In California, SP15 batteries have benefited from the transmission constraints that have been in play since Fall 2023 while NP15’s fleet has been on the other side of things leading into March 2024. We covered it most recently in ‘More Good News for SP15 Batteries’. The tide started to turn this past weekend. Northern California’s battery fleet rejoiced as the NP15 batteries’ arbitrage opportunity outpaced that of Southern California for the first time this year as Sunday’s (17th) saw price drop down $65 consistently during the midday period while bouncing up to the low $40 level during the evening ramp period. In our most recent article, ‘Northern Battery Light’, we examine the good news for NP15 batteries. Read on for a sneak peek. Figure ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 19, 2024 | |
| The Texas market has some interesting things going on within the power and natural gas space the past couple of weeks as Mother Nature swings temperatures while West Texas has a glut of natural gas molecules which ultimately have prices settling in negative territory. In between all of this is the power sector where volatile wind is in play, growing solar and increased outages now that half of March is in the books. Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Breakdown Each of the elements mentioned are covered in the EnergyGPS South Central Package, which is a subset to the North American Power and Natural Enterprise Market Fundamental Product Offering we offer to entities in the energy space. Last week, Houston Shipchannel saw its previous low cash settle broken by settling in at $1.08 only ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 18, 2024 | |
| Transition creates volatility in the energy sector, especially power as regions tied to large quantities of wind capacity can see their respective hourly balancing equation to be turned upside down depending on what Mother Nature provides. We have seen this unfold across Texas, SPP and the Midwest ISO region with the North Zone displaying the latest price action saw the Minn Hub heavy load settle $9.32 on Sunday which is rich compared to the $1.50 average price posed for Saturday (March 16th). The impact of the renewable components was detailed in the latest EnergyGPS special report (titled | MISO Soup - Renewable Ingredients), which is part of the eCommerce Platinum/Platinum Plus packages we offer to interested parties in the energy space. Figure 1 | MISO North Zone Net ... » read more | |