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| 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 | |
| Thursday Oct 9, 2025 | |
| Our blog yesterday touched on the current market conditions in the West, prompting increased renewable curtailments in CAISO over the weekend. These curtailments were tied to a combination of moderating temperatures within the state along with very strong solar potential generation hitting the grid, leading to a middle of the day oversupply. Generation can get caught in pockets of congestion without sufficient demand in the region for the supply and insufficient transmission capacity to get the MW to where they need to go. CAISO year-to-date curtailments have been at record levels for the entirety of the year so far, and last during the last month separated even farther from previous years. During the month of September, CAISO added 156 GWh of solar cuts, compared ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 8, 2025 | |
| The market conditions out West presented renewable curtailments over the weekend as temperatures were moderating, thus bringing down the net load while potential solar was tapping the 22 GW mark at its peak. Figure 1 | CAISO Solar Potential Profile – Solar Hours The graph above displays the past seven days of potential solar output, which is made up of actual megawatts hitting the grid (gray bars) and how much was curtailed (orange/blue bars). What is clear is the 4th was the day of reckoning as the solar block of hours averaged roughly 4 GW of curtailments with the highest hour displaying 5.8 GW. The curtailment is a strong indicator of some sort of congestion, especially if the curtailments show up in the local bucket. Leading up to the 4th, the day-ahead auction clears ... » read more | |