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| Wednesday May 17, 2023 | |
| The West is enjoying high temperatures this week with highs up to 100 degrees F in Phoenix on Monday, May 15th. It’s just the beginning of a heat wave expected to last over the next two weeks. The figure below shows differences from normal cooling degree days this time of year based on a composite Desert Southwest temperature. This week has temperatures 4 to 7 degrees warmer than normal, and it coincides with heat waves in both the Pacific Northwest and California. The last time this happened this spring, all three regions depended on CAISO thermal to meet the increased demand. This round of heat should play out a little differently as the heat has cranked up enough in the last few weeks to melt the snow in the mountains and send it down through the dams across the West. We explore ... » read more | |
| Monday May 15, 2023 | |
| Warm weather abounds across the entire, which equates to strong power demand and the acceleration of the higher elevation snowpack in both the Pacific Northwest and California. The former has limited quantity per se in the Upper Columbia basin (see recent EnergyGPS Pacific Northwest Hydro Report/Discussion) while the latter is plentiful as multiple storms moved though the Golden State since the beginning of January 2023. The amount of snow that remains in the mountains is record setting and is creating issues tied to where to put the remaining snow water equivalent (SWE) quantity as storage facilities are reaching their max and flooding is already in play along the riverbanks. Figure 1 | CAISO Hydro Profile – Hourly The graph above displays the hourly CAISO hydro ... » read more | |
| Friday May 12, 2023 | |
| Our blog yesterday focused on an element of our latest Newsletter Renewable Monthly report: specifically, it examined the expansion of solar capacity in ERCOT going back to 2013, and compared the average monthly solar profile so far this year to the profiles during the past two years. The increase is certainly something to watch, as ERCOT now has higher solar penetration than any other US ISO besides CAISO. Today we’ll focus on a different element of the same report, but staying within the zone of ERCOT solar. Our Renewable Monthly reports focus on the most recent past three months, and compare that time period to the same time period for the past two years. The figure below shows a snippet of the information available in the ERCOT table in the report: Figure 1 | ERCOT RTC Prices ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 11, 2023 | |
| As renewable penetration increases in a given market—especially when solar power rises in prominence in the supply stack—a lot of attention is given to the evening ramp period, as the rapid drop-off in generation in the evening leaves the grid facing a longer and longer “neck” of net load with MW that need to be replaced. In some regions and seasons that can be mitigated by other renewable resources such as wind, depending on the shape of the hourly profile. Looking back at the first full month of spring, we saw this interplay in markets across the country, with ERCOT at the forefront. This was one of the topics of focus in hour latest Newsletter Renewable Monthly article, “April 2023- The Evening Net Load Neck”. ERCOT is seeing rapid ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 10, 2023 | |
| April is a month of spring flowers, rain showers, and Easter bunnies in bowties. For those who celebrate the holiday, the festivities often include baskets full of multicolored plastic eggs that open with a satisfying pop to a candy surprise. Traditionally, each participant is given a single woven basket and told to find as many eggs as possible before the hunt is up. This flies in the face of the well-known saying, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’, which warns of investing everything in just one source. As the month of Easter ends, it’s an important adage for energy grids to remember as well. Supply stacks need to be diverse to ensure power is there when it’s needed. Most grids have a mix of supply sources, including intermittently available ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 9, 2023 | |
| The days of wondering what the West is going to do with no water in the river systems, storage facilities or snowpack in the mountains seem to be in the distant past as the Pacific Northwest is getting its spring flush while California accumulated more snowpack to add the record setting 2023 period that started in early January. Table 1 | EnergyGPS 10-Day Generation and Stream Flow Actuals/Forecast The table above is a daily dashboard that we deliver to clients and is part of the EnergyGPS Pacific Northwest/California Hydro Package we offer to market participants that want to be on top of the regional market fundamentals tied to snowpack, stream flows and actual generation forecast that go out through a full Water Year. The top portion of the table breaks down the daily generation by ... » read more | |
| Monday May 8, 2023 | |
| ERCOT is looking at higher power demand today (May 8th) as temperatures are on the rise across the Lone Star State. This has led to the net load numbers rising as the wind profile continues to bring with it a shift down during the later afternoon hours and only starts to rise around the time the solar hours are coming to an end. Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Looking at the chart above, the gold dotted line represents the day-ahead hourly implied heat rate levels for the North Zone. The big spike up is meaningful as the turquois shaded area (net load) displays the highest level in the two-week window and has a bulge that sits within a Monday, which means coming out of the weekend. Taking a deeper look into the hourly price levels for the North Zone, the week-on-week levels jump out with ... » read more | |
| Friday May 5, 2023 | |
| There’s a saying around Energy GPS when we get it right – “High Fives All Around”! This has been coined by Tim Belden and used after successfully completing consulting projects. In particular, we use the phrase when our forecasts stand up to market actuals. It appears that the Department of Ecology is giving “High Fives All Around” based on its new carbon Cap and Invest Program. The Department held its first Carbon Allowance auction at the end of February where nearly 6.2 million carbon allowances (each allowance covers one metric ton of carbon emissions) were sold at $48.50/MT for a total of nearly $300 million dollars “raised”[1]. The Department of Ecology used the word “raised” instead of perhaps ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 4, 2023 | |
| Spring in the Pacific Northwest is always an exciting time as Mother Nature and the Northwest hydro system will keep you on your toes. The months of April and May are when we can see some of the most volatility in expectations for seasonal water supply. Each day brings new information with the transition from winter to spring—the change of dam operations to replenish the water lost from reservoirs during the winter as well as the pace of that refill, the timing and volume of snow melt and how that snow melt translates into river flows—and conditions can change rapidly. We saw a prime example of this last year late in the month of May. Since mid-March of 2022, the Jan-Jul seasonal water supply forecast at The Dalles had been trending down with a long ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 3, 2023 | |
| With the first few weeks of spring in the rearview, outage season is well underway. With milder weather and demand levels, power plants across the country plan to complete their maintenance during the shoulder months of both spring and fall. This May there are more than a dozen nuclear plants currently 100% offline to do just that. For nuclear plants this is known as a refueling cycle and it occurs every 18 months or 2 years for each plant. Depending on the site and the year, refueling can be a more than month-long process where the plant is completely offline. The plants also take several days and sometimes weeks to ramp on and off in the periods before and after the planned maintenance. With nuclear plants offering important baseload energy for many regions of the country, these outages ... » read more | |