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| 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 | |
| Thursday Jan 25, 2024 | |
| The push in ERCOT to expand solar capacity has been rapid and relentless over the past year, with massive increases year-over-year in the volume of MW from the resource that made their way onto the grid. The hopes that renewable growth can cut through the haze of carbon emissions from the state’s thermal fleet is being put to the test this winter as ERCOT has set several consecutive new records for winter load, topping out at over 78.1 GW back on the 16th. Figure 1 | A Smoky Solar Backdrop The events of the recent winter storm were the cherry on the top of a trend that has been showing up since late last year when it comes to the ERCOT thermal stack as the ISO’s supply stack has been faced with greater challenges than in years past when it comes to net ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 24, 2024 | |
| With the arrival of warmer weather, the impressive draw down in natural gas in the SoCal gas caverns is slowing. The figure below shows year-on-year storage levels for SoCal with the steepest portion in green representing January 2024 so far. For the first three weeks of this year, SoCal was withdrawing close to 1 BCF a day. In comparison, the same dates in January 2023 withdrew less than 0.2 BCF a day and the same dates in 2022 added a total of 0.2 BCF. Compared to other high demand events, a few weeks in December 2022 withdrew around 0.8 BCF a day and another few weeks in February 2023 withdrew around 0.76 BCF a day. So far this month has been an impressive run that puts SoCal storage at 84 BCF on January 23rd of this year, more than 20 BCF lower than the level at the end of ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 23, 2024 | |
| Extreme weather grabs the attention of everyone given the tightness tied to both the electricity and natural gas landscapes. When you drill down to the regional level, we have the market surveillance committees, Independent System Operators and regulatory/political entities sitting in the front row watching every move. Now that Mother Nature has pulled away from the coldest temperatures of the season and is showing nothing but warmer weather on the horizon, the conditions do not warrant the same oversight. Figure 1 | Extreme Weather EnergyGPS likes to think that the market always has something to discuss when it comes to the fundamental supply/demand drivers that impact the regional markets mentioned. Our oversight is to scour the information that might have an ... » read more | |
| Monday Jan 22, 2024 | |
| Now that most of the country is reaching the tail end of the coldest weather of the winter season, many will be wrapping their heads around how the system fared on both the electricity and natural gas fronts. ERCOT was getting a lot of press heading into the winter storm as much preparation was put into play since Storm Uri hit back in February 2021. Figure 1 | Texas Wrapped in the Cold Weather Pattern The other region that had a lot of eyes on it was the Pacific Northwest as this was where the colder weather all started as we saw temperatures nosedive in Western Canada, both Portland and Seattle shift into single digits with wind chill accounted for and the Rockies take it on the chin as negative average temperatures hit parts of its region. The coldness led to ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 19, 2024 | |
| The recent weather pattern in the Pacific Northwest covered the entire region as Western Canada was looking at record temperatures where some places were showign -40 degrees before wind chill. The US portion of the Lower 48 was frigid all the way from Seattle/Tacoma, down to Northern California and over to the Rockies. The weather has subsided for most major demand areas throughout the regions mentioned but there is one sub-region that is still getting iced over given the unique conditions tied to precipitation and wind pattern, that place is Portland, OR. Figure 1 | Portland, OR - Iced Over As of Thursday night, the driveways and sidewalks that were shoveled were now layered with a sheet of ice that was basically invisible as the precipitation was in the form of ... » read more | |