Menu
Featured Articles
| Wednesday Jan 10, 2024 | |
| As much of the country prepares for snow flurries in the skies, EnergyGPS has been preparing a flurry of content to keep our subscribers up to date on how the coming winter weather will impact markets across the nation. Yesterday, we released market flashes for several regions, including ERCOT, the Pacific Northwest, and Alberta, with the most pertinent and up-to-date analysis on the impact the upcoming cold will have on the relevant natural gas and power markets. We also released an article, titled ‘Deep Purple, Not the Band’, which covers the potential for freeze-offs in West Texas. This article and others like it are available to those who have purchased our Newsletter Gold, Platinum, or Platinum Plus packages. In today’s blog, we’ll offer a tasting of the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 9, 2024 | |
| The coldest weather of the winter is solidifying across North America and with that comes a little chaos in the energy space starting with natural gas and ending with the power sector. The former is tethered to heating demand across the northern portion of the continent where the focus is on the rescom component in each region and the temperatures bringing the production regions closer to freeze-off levels. The latter has its own demand component that shows up in hourly increments with the morning and evening ramp periods have steep inclines as everyone is waking up and getting home from work where a cozy warm couch is warranted while the electric vehicle is charging, and the electric stove is warming up dinner. Figure 1 | Winter is Upon Us We have discussed the ... » read more | |
| Monday Jan 8, 2024 | |
| The National Football League (NFL) regular season came to an end yesterday with certain games mattering more than others when it came to who was in the playoffs and what seed each team will be. For me, it was the last Sunday of the year where I get a glimpse of the weather conditions across a wide range of cities/regions now that winter is upon us. If you have been following the markets as of late, Mother Nature is finally delivering colder temperatures across North America in the 15-day forecast along with the first real snowfall in the upper regions such as the Rockies, Upper Midwest and Northeast. Figure 1 | Atmospheric G2 6-10 Day Weather Forecast The graph above displays the 6-10 day model runs as of this morning while Sunday’s NFL games displayed what was happening on the ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 5, 2024 | |
| Back on October 22nd, ERCOT experienced a highly unusual software failure. Figure 1 | Snip from ERCOT Presentation for Reliability and Markets Committee Meeting The software issue led, eventually, to prices across the system rising to almost $3500 per MWh during the middle of an otherwise moderately-priced day. The graph below shows the hourly average real time prices at the ERCOT North Hub, from 10/21/23 through 10/23/23. The spike in the middle of the graph is the price that resulted from the software error. Figure 2 | ERCOT North Hub RT Prices, 10/21/23 – 10/23/23 ERCOT has provisions for making corrections to real time prices under normal circumstances. Real time prices aren’t considered finalized until several days after they’re originally published, and ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 4, 2024 | |
| The New Year does not come about without the previous year coming to an end. With that comes several of our monthly dashboards (CAISO and ERCOT Battery) along with the Monthly Energy Recap and Renewable Monthly reports, which are all a part of the EnergyGPS Platinum Plus eCommerce product offering. If you would like to track the supply/demand balancing act on a daily or weekly basis and dive into the market fundamentals, the EnergyGPS North American Power and Natural Gas Enterprise Product Offering is something to consider. The content below highlights some of the insight delivered within the Renewable Monthly Report, which the latest was published yesterday. Figure 1 | NP15 and SP15 Solar Capture Ratio CAISO’s poor solar performance deepened in the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 3, 2024 | |
| It was a warm end to 2023 for Alberta with hope for cold on the way as we ring in the new year. The figure below shows heating degree days and heating degree day differences from normal for the Canadian province. The last two months of last year saw mostly above normal temperature as represented by the red bars. Average temperatures jumped in December, up from freezing level in November to 36 degrees to end the year. Several days were more than 20 degrees hotter than normal. Figure 1 | Actual HDDs and HDD Differences from Normal in Alberta (Nov - Dec 2023) As expected, load was down compared to previous years with the heating demand lessened. The figure below shows the profile for an average day in November and December in Alberta. The first panel show typical load with this year in red ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 2, 2024 | |
| Happy New Year to Everyone!! The shift to 2024 awoke Mother Nature as she is finally going to deliver some winter-like temperatures to several parts of North America, starting with the West Coast. The precipitation pattern, combined with the colder temperatures, will lend itself to snowpack accumulatio in the mountains where it is desperately needed. As the week progresses, the weather pattern will move into the Rockies and central part of the Lower 48 where freezing temperatures will help the ski resorts finally get some base. Figure 1 | Cumulative HDD for Lower 48 – Latest 15-Day Forecast The chart above is an illustration of the 15-day forecasted HDD levels for all the Lower 48. It clearly shows the current HDD forecast (blue line) tracking higher than where ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 29, 2023 | |
| Another year is going into the history books as this weekend marks the last couple days of 2023. Before we turn our attention to the upcoming 2024 Calendar Year, it is worth it to reflect on some of the key highlights that allow energy to be one of the most dynamic and volatile sectors in the market. Figure 1 | Goodbye 2023, Welcome 2024 Out West, the natural gas landscape was licking it wounds from a lashing it took at the end of 2022 as gas utilities were racing to the regulatory committees begging for some assistance. The common routine is to have a few meetings to set forth the proposals to which one was tied to the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) and its ability to approve more capacity to the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility within the SoCal Gas ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 28, 2023 | |
| While much of the country is making their way back into the office after the holidays and planning when to take down the Christmas lights still adorning their trees and houses, in Texas the holiday decorations aren't the only thing lighting up the state. Early in ERCOT’s renewable transition phase, the conversation focused on wind penetration as the West was the pioneer when harvesting what Mother Nature delivered while the North and South regions followed it the footsteps with added capacity and a more robust 24-hour profile. In recent years, solar has been capturing the topic of conversation as ERCOT is quickly gaining ground on California which is the pioneer when it comes to all renewable technologies. The Renewable Monthly Report (Platinum Plus eCommerce ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 27, 2023 | |
| Southern California’s world looks a lot different this holiday season compared to the previous two. If you recall, prior to Winter 2022, the big concern was tied to the reduction of transport capacity from the Desert Southwest due to the August 2021 fire on L2000. Such a reduction in the overall capacity prompted the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) to allow 7.2 BCF more gas to be put into Aliso Canyon’s storage cavern. This decision came with public protests and testimonials but nonetheless, the board members passed the ruling unanimously. Figure 1 | Aliso Canyon Storage Levels The ironic thing about the decision is that the SoCal Gas system did not have to dip into the incremental gas storage volume all winter despite the lack of natural gas ... » read more | |