Featured Articles
| Monday Apr 23, 2018 | |
| It has been a long, cold, and wet winter for most residents of the Pacific Northwest. The wetter the winter, the more snow that falls in the mountains, which eventually melts into water and gets pushed through the river system. The colder the winter, the later in the year that said melt occurs. As you can see in Figure 1, using the January-July measure as a barometer for this year's water year, there will be 120.8 million acre feet (MAF) going through The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River system between January 1, 2018 and July 31st, 2018. This figure is 119% of the 1981-2000 normal. That is a VERY healthy water year, and one of the biggest on record (16th biggest water year on record). Amazingly enough it is still 17 MAF shy of last year's giant ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 20, 2018 | |
| Anyone who has spent time around young kids knows that they ask a ton of questions. Most questions have easy answers which you give and move on. But some questions are disarming, and go right to a core principle or a value. A number of years ago I had the following dialogue with my daughter: Daughter: Where would we live if we didn’t have any money? Tim: Well, mom and I both have jobs and that’s where the money comes from that pays the mortgage on the house. Daughter: But what if you didn’t have a job? Tim: I’d go find another one. Daughter: But what if you couldn’t find another job? Tim: We have savings and we’d live off that for a while. Daughter: What would happen if you didn’t have a job and you had no savings? Long pause … in four ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 19, 2018 | |
| Since the inception of the California Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) policy, everyone has been watching how the build out of both wind and solar capacity was/is going to play out. As it stands right now, the State of California continues to be the front-runner when it comes to both utility-scaled and rooftop solar capacity integration. The graph below illustrates the steady increase when it comes to the former as we have seen it go from 7.5 GW at the beginning of 2016 to over 10.3 GW starting in 2018. Figure 1 | Utility Scaled Cumulative Max Solar Output in California When it comes to the roof-top side of the equation, we are seeing a steady dose of 100 MW of capacity added per month (1.2 GW per year) over the past three years, which puts the current capacity total just ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 18, 2018 | |
| Once a month the EIA releases the Drilling Productivity Report which highlights Oil and Natural Gas production estimates for the current and next month. The report provided three key data points: New-well Production Per rig by Region, Production by Region, and DUC (drilled but uncompleted) Wells by Region. The data is broken into seven regions: Anadarko, Appalachia, Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Niobrara, and Permian. Figure 1 | DPR Regional Data - Map The data in the report is a useful tool for getting direction and double checking assumptions, however this months release threw a bit of curve ball at us. The changes were twofold, with large revisions for previous months and an uplift for May. In Figure 2 below we display the DPR production by region with the rows ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 17, 2018 | |
| Chalk this winter up for the record books. Yesterday, Edmonton, Alberta set a new mark for the longest streak of days with overnight lows below freezing, breaking a mark that has stood since 1975. That is 168 straight days of dropping below zero Celsius. This has produced a record amount of heating load for the province. NGTL demand has posted new all-time highs as well as monthly averages since late December. There has been a persistent ridge that has locked cold air into the region just east of the Canadian Rockies for almost five months. Fortunately for the residents of Alberta, the weather models are confirming a transition to spring later this week. Figure 1 | Edmonton Cold Streak Figure 2 below shows how the natural gas demand for the NGTL system has performed ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 16, 2018 | |
| On April 4th the Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) welcomed two new participants. Powerex and Idaho Power Company (IPCo) joined the EIM which already includes the CAISO, PacifiCorp, Nevada Power, Arizona Public Service, Puget Sound Energy, and Portland General Electric. As an old transmission junkie I am not only thrilled to see more companies join the EIM as such improves the efficiency of dispatch throughout the WECC, but I am also fascinated to see what each company brings to the table upon joining. Some companies join and go all-in with nearly every generating and transmission asset they own being offered into the EIM. Other companies bring substantially less assets to the EIM table. There is nothing wrong with either approach as not only do more ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 13, 2018 | |
| In the good old days of analyzing electricity markets life was simple. You had twelve months. You had your peak price. You had your off peak price. The pricing periods were driven by the needs of utilities who were trying to exchange bulk power. Creating standard products was helpful as it made the things that you are buying and selling more liquid – it eased commerce. The peak time period was established during the 16 hours of heaviest demand. The off peak hours were everything else. The WECC decided that “peak” days were Monday through Saturday. The rest of the country decided that “peak” days were Monday through Friday. Everyone agreed to take NERC holidays off. From the load’s point of view, the system works fine. The utilities play a game of ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 12, 2018 | |
| Who says winter is suppose to be over in April? The people living in the Midwest do not want to hear any of that nonsense as temperatures for the month have been well below normal. In fact, it has been so cold that any precipitation came in the form of snowflakes blanketing the ground. Figure 1 | Minneapolis Daytime High/Low Temperatures - Actual and Forecast Figure 1 displays Minneapolis, MN daytime high/low temperatures as well as what the forecast was calling for. As you can see, the colder weather started back at the end of March and hit rock bottom the day after the long Easter holiday (April 4th). At the same time the overnight lows were in single digits or low teens, Mother Nature was throwing in some precipitation in the form of snow. If that ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 11, 2018 | |
| The majority of our attention over the last two weeks has been focused on the basis hubs as the Algonquin and Socal City Gates have been on fire through early spring. The high prices are justified as both pipes are seeing deliverability issues and temperatures which are strong deviations from normal (in opposite directions). Henry Hub on the other hand has seen little to no volatility since the start of the month and has remained in the same $2.55 to $2.75 range since February. Figure 1 | Henry Hub Prompt Month Contract Price - Jan Through April 2018 vs 2017 With all the excitement at the basises and the lack of overall price volatility at the hub, we have turned our attention towards the volatility, but that's not so say there haven't been ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 10, 2018 | |
| This past weekend there was a spike in the number of Lower 48 nuclear outages as per the NRC daily posting. From Thursday into Monday the total moved up from 15 to 22 GWa. The next two weeks usually mark the peak of the spring outage season. A number of forced outages have been tacked onto the total this spring. Pilgrim 1 (676MW) in NEPOOL has been forced out of service with no return date. Palo Verde 1 (1330MW) has also been operating at reduced power. Figure 1 | NRC Nuclear Outage Total (2013 - 2018) The increased outage total and ongoing cold weather throughout the Mid-Continent and Northeast has taken the net load throughout the country up to 413 GWa. That is 50 GWa higher than what was recorded for April 2017. After this week we will see a big drop in the net load ... » read more | |