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| Thursday Feb 8, 2024 | |
| Perhaps the defining characteristic of this past January that was consistently observed across the entire country was significant cold snap that showed up in the early-to-mid month. In much of the country the drop in temperatures produced significant effects on the power and natural gas markets. In our latest Newsletter Renewable Monthly Report, “January ’24 – Sun’s Rays and Cold Days”, we delve into the latest in renewables during the month of January, market by market (sample Renewable Monthly Report). One example is ERCOT, where the solar growth that has been on display over the past 10 months is measurably changing the evening ramp with implications for both ISO balancing and price formation. The colder weather was present in ERCOT ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Feb 7, 2024 | |
| It’s that time of year again when nuclear plants go offline for refueling. It hardly feels like enough time has passed since the last round of outages that started in Fall 2023. Part of the reason for that is that there are still a few plants remaining offline from the last round. The Prairie Island plants were offline all of November, December, and into the start of 2024. Prairie Island 2 is still 100% offline at the start of February. Similarly, Waterford 3 is just starting to return to the grid after going offline for refueling in October of last year. Overall, nuclear outages have been unseasonably high at the start of this year, reaching over 8 GW off last week. Just as outages have started to calm, we’re seeing the first plant offline for spring refueling and can expect ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Feb 6, 2024 | |
| The weather model runs delivered colder temperatures across the Lower 48 and Canada coming out of the weekend, which meant that the middle of February was going to see higher rescom demand compared to the current levels. One would think that with such a move in HDD levels, the front of the forward natural gas curve would have moved higher as it was less than a month prior that the last cold front wreaked havoc on specific regions, including the South Central Region. Figure 1 | Lower 48 HDD Comparison – 2/5/2024 This was not the case as the prompt month (March 2024) traded in a tight range and did not deviate away from Friday’s settle of $2.07. This is important to note as the discussions around what comes next is happening as part of the EnergyGPS North American ... » read more | |
| Monday Feb 5, 2024 | |
| California got pummeled this weekend with another round of storms that left areas in the southern part of the state flooded and nowhere to go. This has been a common theme for the past two years as the regional precipitation pattern is different from the previous five that left the grid with drought-like conditions. Figure 1 | The Next Round of Storms Mother Nature’s pattern is not the only thing that has changed over the years as the grid’s day-ahead and real-time pricing is displaying potent S to N congestion during the midday block of hours as the massive renewable presence tied to solar is outpacing that of any new battery capacity and/or transmission upgrades where they are needed most. The marginal cost of congestion (MCC) expanded out to ... » read more | |
| Friday Feb 2, 2024 | |
| Cali’s Snowpack Is Off to a Slow Start Last year around this time, I kept an envious eye on California’s Mammoth Mountain to ogle over their gaudy snow levels. At the end of January 2023, Mammoth had 397 inches of snow, compared to this season’s total of 98 inches through the end of January, coming on strong lately with 72 inches since New Year’s. And although comparing this year to an audacious 2022/2023 season may be unfair, this year’s snow accumulation to date raises concern for hydro operations, water management, and wildfires the next few months. Figure 1| Uncertain Snowpack this Winter So far this year, California’s mild and wet winter has left the state with a snowpack well below normal and far behind last ... » read more | |
| Thursday Feb 1, 2024 | |
| The last three days have seen a rapid change in output from the hydro system. While there has been some precipitation in play, it has not been the major factor in the MW changes, which is tied almost entirely to Operations at Grand Coulee. The story since mid-month at Grand Coulee has been a consistent effort to refill the project, as the flows have not been needed downstream thanks to plenty of precipitation in the Willamette Valley boosting streamflow and water levels on the Lower Columbia, such that the Chum incubation operation targets could be met without support from Coulee. As a result, we saw Coulee hold back a portion of inflows that increased from the 16th up until the 27th last Saturday, when the project filled enough to increase its forebay elevation by 0.7 ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 31, 2024 | |
| If you’re familiar with our CAISO Daily Battery Dashboard, where EnergyGPS dissects the dispatch of the CAISO battery fleet and potential revenue streams for participation in various markets, then you’re also probably familiar with the CAISO Monthly Battery Dashboard. In the monthly dashboard, we zoom out and look at the same data on a monthly level, allowing for easier identification of longer-term trends. EnergyGPS is excited to announce that we will now be offering a similar monthly report for ERCOT batteries to complement the ERCOT Daily Battery Dashboard. 2023 was an exciting year for the ERCOT battery fleet with its quickly growing capacity and new records for maximum fleet dispatch. The figure below is just one that you can expect to see in our new monthly dashboard. It ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 30, 2024 | |
| The natural gas power burn numbers have been impressive during the month of January 2024 as the cold weather spurt mid-month had an impact all the while a modest cash price signal tied to several spot natural gas hubs has allowed the implied heat rates to expand across both the heavy and light load periods. Figure 1 | US Lower 48 Power Burn Comparison (2022-2024) – Rolling 7-Day Average Looking at the graph in Figure 1, the power burn consumption is represented as a negative value as the molecules are pulled off the grid and consumed by the actual gas-fired power generator. The x-axis displays the days of the year starting on November 1st and ending October 31st. The y-axis represents the BCF value on a rolling 7-day period (smooths the line out). The ... » read more | |
| Monday Jan 29, 2024 | |
| The middle of January delivered some colder temperatures across the West, which brought the attention to the Pacific Northwest as power prices soared. This was a bit of a change compared to just over a year ago when the California gas world was front and center, grabbing all the headlines. If you recall, it was about this time last year when the atmospheric river system started to roll through California and drop both rainfall and snow to the key basins. Landslides and flooding were the images posted on the news, while farmland was getting drenched. A similar type of storm moved through Southern California 10-days ago where the jet stream pattern pulled water off the Pacific Ocean and crashed waves into several cities along the coastline. Figure 1 | Southern ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 26, 2024 | |
| For the past few years, EGPS has published annual “Renewable Awards” newsletters that give an overview of the performance of renewables (looking at factors like market penetration, value, capture ratio) across all the US ISOs, plus the Pacific Northwest. We’re back! The summary of the 2023 results is shown below. The results for all markets and awards can be found in the article we published yesterday, titled 'Renewable Awards - 2023'. Figure 1| Renewies 2023 Summary ERCOT Houston Solar took the “Most Valuable” award, with a gen-weighted real-time LMP of $75.17/MWh. ERCOT had a strong year, with the top 4 winners all belonging to ERCOT. Below is a preview of the ERCOT gen-weighted RT LMPs. In part, these results are due to the fact that Texas saw its 2nd ... » read more | |