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| Thursday Jul 25, 2024 | |
| Those living within PJM’s boundaries are enjoying a bit of a break from the summer that has delivered the heat almost constantly, pushing total June cooling degree-days to 312 for the month—more than twice the number from June of last year—and July CDDs on track to end the month well above average and nearly 10% higher year-on-year. We’ve seen the impact of heat so far in PJM this summer. System load reached a new high earlier this month of the 15th and then again on the 16th, topping out at 152.5 GW of demand. The load growth is apparent especially in the area south of Washington DC in PJM’s Dominion Zone. The figure below plots daily maximum load in Dominion Zone against the Richmond daily average temperature for all weekdays from ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jul 24, 2024 | |
| The heat in the West this July has been breaking records left and right with most of California experiencing its hottest summer ever and cities in the DSW hitting extreme temperatures. Two weeks ago, July 7-13, total CDDs for the western US hit their highest point of the year and reached levels comparable with the hottest days of last summer (August 15th and 16th). Despite the heat, energy prices did not reach extreme levels. In our most recent battery report, titled ‘Heat, but no Sizzle’, we dove deeper into the day-ahead and real-time prices and the opportunities for CAISO’s battery fleet during the heat. Read on for a sneak preview. Figure 1 – Actual Temperatures for California and Degrees from Normal (Jul 1 – 14) As part of our long-term battery ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jul 23, 2024 | |
| The western part of Canada has been battling the raging wildfires (especially in Alberta) that started early this year due to a mild winter season which caused dry conditions. The wildfires became extreme towards the end of June and the number of wildfires categorized as out-of-control has been growing gradually since then. In our recent natural gas report for West Canada titled “Alberta’s Wildfires Turmoil”, we talked about how the natural gas world in the region has been affected by these wildfires. Figure 1 | Alberta Wildfire Status Dashboard, July 16, 24 – Government of Alberta & NGTL Map From figure 1 above, we have two maps: the one on the left displays the status of wildfires in Alberta, and the one on the right shows NGTL’s map of ... » read more | |
| Monday Jul 22, 2024 | |
| The West has seen some mind-blowing temperatures of late with 5-year averages looking cool in comparison and 30-year averages looking downright silly. With that in mind, the grid has fared well with July prices remaining under the last three years. But with unusual weather comes unusual happenings in the power market, and CAISO price settles are š¯… going in a most peculiar wayš¯… In our recent coverage of California we’ve been paying careful attention to one such oddity: the relationship between pricing in SP15 and NP15. Figure 1 | 12 x 24 Day Ahead Power Settles by region The above figure shows a comparison of pricing between SP15 and NP15 across years and summer months. The first element of note in this figure is that NP15 averaged above SP15 this July. While solar ... » read more | |
| Friday Jul 19, 2024 | |
| Aluminum Man 2024 Written by Tim Belden The 15th Annual Portland Aluminum Man Competition (“AMC”) took place on a beautiful, sunny day at the end of June in Portland, Oregon. Long time readers are familiar with the AMC, in fact, a small number of readers claim the annual update is the only reason they subscribe to this blog. The event is called “Aluminum Man” (think aluminum foil) because it is the opposite of an intense event such as Iron Man. The AMC consists of twelve men competing in a series of ten individual and team events. Teams are changed after each event with the goal to maximize the mixing of participants. In one event you’d be paired with one guy, and in the next event you will be paired with two different guys. At the end of the day we ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jul 18, 2024 | |
| The heat in the Pacific Northwest has been nothing short of sweltering so far this month as Mother Nature has delivered blistering temperatures to both the Northwest and Northeastern United States in recent days. AESO has been flirting with prices near the cap earlier this week and is facing rising net load numbers once again today as the load is still present and the forecast has wind on the decline. Down on the US side of the border the grid has seen hydro power output shift intraday to flex and lengthen the afternoon/evening ramp but fail to shift the overall flat average generation until the past 2-3 days. Starting around the 4th of July holiday and leading up through last weekend the focus at the top of the Columbia main stem has been on holding back a portion water ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jul 17, 2024 | |
| For batteries in CAISO, the fleet started out mostly participating in ancillary services. Once the fleet’s capacity surpassed the required amount needed to provide the relevant AS services, the transition began. More batteries started participating in the day-ahead and real-time energy markets, more dispatch started making its way on the grid, and AS prices fell in relation to opportunities for day-ahead and real-time energy arbitrage. We’ve been monitoring this same transition for the ERCOT battery fleet. It started last March in ‘The Case of the Missing Dispatch’. In that special report, we predicted the fleet would saturate the ancillary service markets, find more revenue opportunities in capturing day-ahead and real-time energy arbitrage, and dispatch more to ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jul 16, 2024 | |
| In the past, we have talked about how the wind generation has been relatively strong in June 2024 in SPP. Mother nature continues to be generous with plenty of wind volumes during as observed the first half of this month compared to what we have seen in the past two years. From the figure below, we have a 12 by 24 graph showing the net load components (load and wind generation), and thermal generation from 2022 through July 15th. It should be noted that the month of July 2024 includes only the first 15 days of the month. Figure 1 | SPP 12x24 Profile, 2022-2024 The generation from the blades has been especially strong this month during the midday block of hours while hovering somewhat at the same level seen in the past two years across the early morning and evening hours. On average, the ... » read more | |
| Monday Jul 15, 2024 | |
| Friday's office exercise was titled 'spot the difference' where everyone was given 30 minutes to deliver their storyline tied to the West cash market. Below are a few highlights from the healthy in-office conversation and detail tied to the daily and weekly commentary associated to content delivered via the EneryGPS West Power and Natural Gas product offering. Post the 4th of July holiday, Friday the 5th rolled by with unimpressive day-ahead power settles in CAISO (and the West) despite the hottest temperatures and the highest peak load of the year to date. Once we moved into the full work week period, the pricing construct started to change as the day ahead settles started climbing despite similar loads within California. For example, the 11th saw the peak ... » read more | |
| Friday Jul 12, 2024 | |
| Several years ago I worked on a hydro purchase power agreement for a municipality located in the Pacific Northwest. Anyone who works in the hydro space knows that the first challenge is to figure out what a “normal” water year looks like. We gathered forty years of streamflow data and pulled together our various scenarios for developing a production profile from which we could build a revenue forecast. When we had the rough draft of the results completed, the project manager said that we had to run these results by Chris down in the sustainability department. Chris was extremely concerned about climate change and thought that our historical analysis was likely going to provide the wrong answer. Chris’ thesis was that climate change would adversely impact the hydro ... » read more | |