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| 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 | |
| Tuesday Apr 30, 2024 | |
| The Pacific Northwest has always been known for its hydro system as the dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers supplied several regions across the entire West for decades. Over the past few years, the system has become tighter in a sense that fish spill requirements have increased between April and the summer months where more water is diverted from the turbines and into the spillway. The need for reserve capacity and grid reliability associated to the load growth seen in recent years leaves entities needing to find it’s incremental megawatts via the transmission lines and not the hydro generators. Figure 1 | Pacific Northwest Hydro The added downward pressure on the regional hydro system can be associated to Mother Nature delivering drought-like conditions across ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 29, 2024 | |
| The month of April has come and gone all the while watching the May natural gas contract going off the board under the $1.60 mark. This is after a period during the second week where the market fundamentals tried to get it to settle over the $2.00 mark as there was talk around production throwing in the towel, Mother Nature delivering some colder temperatures across demand regions and the LNG facilities returning to a state that would take over 12 BCF/d and send it off to other parts of the world. Figure 1 | Lower 48 Production The production levelized between 97-98 BCF/d, with some of the drop tied to planned maintenance. We have seen West Texas continue to settle in negative territory most of the month while other production basins are ending the month with weekend levels ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 26, 2024 | |
| The renewable transition is in full force across the entire country where the West is dealing with the an abundant amount of solar generation despite the fact that the battery fleet continue to grow at a steadfast pace. In the South Central region, we have ERCOT holding first place when it comes to the combination of wind and solar generation with a sprinkle of battery capacity. SPP continues down the road of volatile wind output that pushes the north region into negative territory quite often in the light load and on weekends. MISO has its volume and regional balancing issues but there demand vs renewable ratio still keeps the price afloat for the time being. The further east we move, the less volume tied to renewables but that does not mean there is not a ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 25, 2024 | |
| The warmer temperatures of the past several days are having a marked impact on California’s hydro system. Not only is there more water in play (in an already healthy system), but we can observe changes in the dispatch behavior of CAISO hydro as projects follow the price signal and shape their flows and generation. Figure 1 | California State Total Snow Water Equivalent (Inches) Spring melt has brought over three inches of snow water equivalent (SWE) out of the Sierra Nevadas and elsewhere throughout the state in just the past three days. From 25.3 inches (133% of normal) this past Sunday the 21st, total snowpack has fallen to 22.2 inches, with plenty more to come over the remainder of the spring. The pattern may shift or slow in the short term with ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 24, 2024 | |
| The negative midday pricing in SP15 and more recently NP15 this spring has provided the perfect charging opportunities for CAISO batteries. We covered the trend recently in an article titled ‘Renewing Negativity’. Since the publishing of the article, the trend has only continued with real-time SP15 prices often dipping between -$30/MWh to -$50/MWh in the middle of the day. The figure below is featured in our Daily CAISO Battery Dashboard and displays the CAISO fleet’s charging (blue) and discharging (orange) pattern alongside SP15 prices in black and NP15 real-time prices in brown. The pricing environment alongside the growing capacity of the fleet culminated in a new record-breaking dispatch last Sunday, April 21st. Figure 1 | Price Responsiveness – Battery ... » read more | |