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| Tuesday May 14, 2024 | |
| The solar storm has grabbed the headlines over the weekend and on Monday where an article talked about how big machinery, such as tractors in the vast fields in the Midwest, lost their GPS signal for a period. Others have found themselves gazing into the night sky looking at the aurora lights, which are noticeable due to the super geomagnetic storms that are in play. As of right now, the world is not coming to an end as the disruptions have been minimal to satellites and the power grid. It should be noted that has been one solar storm that has been in play for months and has impacted the power grid. That is none other than the California fleet as the capacity continues to grow and curtailments are a common occurence. The storm is so impactful that it ... » read more | |
| Monday May 13, 2024 | |
| The Midwest ISO (MISO) region continues to see renewable growth in both the solar and wind sectors, which in turn brings the daily market fundamentals into the conversations that are had for CAISO, ERCOT and SPP. The maturity of the renewable development in both CAISO and ERCOT allow for each region to move to the top of the list when it comes to each technology having an impact on the overall price structure in both the day-ahead and real-time markets which in turn impact the forward market. Figure 1 | MISO Solar and Wind 12x24 Profiles The graph above illustrates both renewable profiles by displaying the 12x24 values over the past three years with the current generation numbers represented by the red line. A couple of interesting things stick out with the first tied to the ... » read more | |
| Friday May 10, 2024 | |
| The energy markets continue to deliver volatility and structural changes that are reflected in the price action. Starting with the natural gas environment, we have seen the end of winter and start of spring deliver a price signal that was directed at producers to figure out a way to manage their portfolio by reducing their output. Every Q4-2023 and now Q1-2024 quarterly earnings report discussed this exact situation and the action has been quite pronounced at the start of each month, including May. Take for example, at the end of April, the Lower 48 was looking at roughly 96 BCF/d and over the past couple of days, the level has displayed numbers as low as 93.8 BCF. Figure 1 | Lower 48 Production Levels – Daily Some of the decline is tied to maintenance season ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 9, 2024 | |
| Taking a glance around the EGPS office yesterday revealed a picture that looked like it would be more at home back during the winter months than the heart of spring, entering into the second week of May. What stuck out was that every desk had a warm comfy jacket nearby, either hanging from a chair or adorning that chair’s occupant. Here in Portland (and throughout the Pacific Northwest) the weather has been locked in an unusually cool pattern for the time of year, and has been so for several weeks. The mornings are still crisp enough to prompt each of us to bundle up before heading into work, and the low temperatures (especially overnight) have had an unusual delaying effect on the way the hydro year is playing out compared to normal. River flows across the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 8, 2024 | |
| Just a couple weeks ago, we wrote about a record-breaking dispatch as the CAISO battery fleet’s dispatch surpassed 6 GW for the first time. Since then, that same record has been broken four more times! The figure below shows the running maximum discharge for the CAISO fleet starting in the beginning of 2023. After the previous record set in February lasted more than a month at 5.6 GW, the CAISO fleet broke through the 6 GW and 7 GW mark all in the last few weeks. We explored the contributing factors and the growing capacity of the fleet in our most recent battery report titled ‘April Gains for the CAISO Battery Fleet’. Read on for a sneak peek. Figure 1 | Running Maximum of CAISO Fleet’s Dispatch One of the big trends in April that contributed to the increased ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 7, 2024 | |
| The California power market took on colder weather over the weekend as snow accumulation was seen in the Sierra Mountains all the while heating demand rose. From a price perspective, the increase in the hourly profile was enough to keep the real-time prices in SP15 from dipping deep into negative territory on Saturday while NP15 saw the entire 24-hour strip settle in positive territory with a few of the midday hour reaching into triple digits. Figure 1 | CAISO Battery Charge/Discharge Breakdown w/Real-Time Price The chart in Figure 1 can be viewed in the CAISO Daily Battery Dashboard, that is included in the Platinum Plus eCommerce Product Offering along with the Enterprise California Tracker Sub-Package. The focus in this piece is on the black (SP15) and gray (NP15) lines as ... » read more | |
| Monday May 6, 2024 | |
| April continued to shower the natural gas world with plenty of bearish market fundamentals ranging from production to mild weather where the in-between component of LNG has continued to play a major role in the regional balancing conversation. If you recall, back in June 2022, the natural gas market was on a bullish terror as the Russia-Ukraine war was at the forefront of all conversations given that the European market was dependent on the Russian commodity. It was at that time, double digit front month future contracts were leaning into double digits only to have news break that the Freeport LNG facility had a fire that ultimately shut things down while investigators and regulatory entities moved in. Figure 1 | LNG Aggregated and Freeport’s Daily Natural Gas ... » read more | |
| Friday May 3, 2024 | |
| For the better part of my career, I’ve worked at places where the majority of new hires have fewer than three years of works experience in the energy field. Many of them are recent graduates. I’ve interviewed in excess of 100 people over the years. After the standard interview questions, I have two questions which help me determine which of the smart, articulate, people with impressive backgrounds, and good grades may not be a good match for the work that we do. The first question is alarmingly simple – let’s build a pie chart of how you would spend your time at your ideal job. I usually offer the following categories: research, writing, coding/number crunching, meeting with clients, collaborating with colleagues, data cleaning, and administrative. The reaction to ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 2, 2024 | |
| April is a transitional period throughout the energy and natural gas spaces. All across the country the end of winter prompts the switch from pulling gas molecules out of storage caverns to the rush to refill in time for summer (although much of the country is ahead of the curve this spring compared to usual). In the Pacific Northwest and CAISO everyone is bracing for temperatures to climb enough to start the deluge of snow melting and coming off the mountains to boost hydro flows and generation. Shoulder season maintenance has peaked or is close to peaking and generation capacity starts gearing up to return to action in the summer push. And in markets across the country wind generation is hitting its highest levels for the year. It's all a part of April's ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 1, 2024 | |
| As part of our coverage of the growing battery fleets across the country, we publish daily and monthly battery dashboards for both CAISO and ERCOT. Today is the first of the month which means all those subscribed can expect a brand new ERCOT Monthly Battery Dashboard and CAISO Monthly Battery Dashboard in their inboxes. Recently, we’ve also organized our historical battery content and begun publishing battery-specific content as battery reports. We released one yesterday checking in on the newest ancillary service market in ERCOT and the ERCOT battery fleet’s participation in it. Read on for a sneak peek of our latest battery report, titled ‘Updates on ECRS’. ERCOT’s new ECRS market started up in June 2023. This change cut the amount of non-spin which ERCOT ... » read more | |