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| Wednesday Jul 30, 2025 | |
| The Midwest has been working its way through a heat wave over the last few days. Temperatures were above normal with highs reaching over 90 degrees F in some North and Central MISO cities. The heat led to a flurry of alerts from MISO starting last week. Capacity Advisory Initiates were called due to high temperatures and high levels of forced outages, as well as hot weather alerts and conservative operations alerts. On Monday night strong winds were added to the mix while demand peaked over 120 GW leading to a Max Gen Alert. Figure 1 | Midwest Daily Average Temperatures and Difference from Normal (Jun-Jul) The figure below is featured in MISO Daily Supply Demand Dashboard. As mentioned above, demand was impressive both this week and last week, but the forecasted demand was even higher. » read more | |
| Tuesday Jul 29, 2025 | |
| Our latest special report titled “Waha in Motion” examines the spot natural gas prices at the Waha hub in West Texas, which often plummet—sometimes into negative territory—due to limited pipeline takeaway capacity. While Alberta faces similar oversupply challenges, Waha’s volatility is more extreme, especially during maintenance events. Despite signs of improved resilience in 2025 compared to 2024, Waha prices remain highly sensitive to any flow disruptions. Visual data comparisons show a notable decrease in the share of negative cash price settlements this year, highlighting some recent stability. Figure 1 | NGI Henry Hub and Waha Cash Prices A key factor in Waha’s improved performance is the Matterhorn Express pipeline, launched in October 2024. The ... » read more | |
| Monday Jul 28, 2025 | |
| Since back in April, SoCal gas has been under pressure. Long term capacity cuts in their Northern Zone, starting July 1st and going until November of 2026, promised to restrict imports and elevated the value of stored molecules. Before this announcement, their storage reserves looked healthy, but after the race was on to refill. This race is now nearing the finish line as stored molecules approach the same level as a year prior. The story is far from over though, as who knows what late summer and the upcoming winter could deliver. Figure 1 | SoCal Storage Volume by Year (mmcf) Our first figure, taken from our West Gas Daily Report, gives a year-over-year comparison of SoCal’s natural gas storage volumes. The current gas year, starting in November 2024, is pictured in blue, the ... » read more | |
| Friday Jul 25, 2025 | |
| Typically, the wording in the title of our blog is reversed, “Nothing solves high prices like high prices”, say the economists of the world. In other words, high prices incent either new supply to come into the market which ultimately helps to meet demand and bring down prices or consumers curtail demand, also helping to bring down or moderate prices. In the case of 2024’s springtime midday solar glut, all that excess supply, low prices and curtailment stoked an appetite for those unwanted midday MWhs specifically in the form of batteries which eat up all the extra MWhs in 2025. In Figure 1 below, we show the capture ratios for SP15 for the past three years. Capture ratio is the ratio of the generation-weighted price earned by a resource ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jul 24, 2025 | |
| This July has delivered the lowest Pacific Northwest hydro generation for ten years so far through this past Tuesday. Total system generation is averaging just 9.4 GW, down from nearly 12 GW one year ago and 10.6 GW in July of 2023. Daily flat average gen for the past three years is plotted in the figure below, and shows an increase from very early in the month as well as an uptick since the weekend. The summer has been marked by dry conditions (carrying on from the spring) with little precipitation but also no extreme heat events. The Northwest had just emerged from a cool period early in the week but is seeing temperature slide down once again, with Portland expected to stay below 80 degrees on Friday and Saturday, which is keeping load contained. For the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jul 23, 2025 | |
| Things are heating up tonight in the Midwest. With a Capacity Initiate Advisory in place, the signal is out that conditions are tight and generators need to be ready to respond. The figure below features aggregate temperature forecasts from Atmospheric G2 for MISO, North MISO, and South MISO. North MISO, which has seen a good amount of load growth this year, will have highs around 90 degrees F today and tomorrow. South MISO will reach the high 90s today which is slightly above normal for this time of year. The above-normal heat in the South will be brief, while the North has orange covering the forecast for almost a week. Figure 1 | MISO Temperature Forecast from Atmospheric G2 Demand is expected to be the highest tonight and Thursday evening. Both days have forecasted load levels over ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jul 22, 2025 | |
| One of our frequent natural gas topics is the continued weakness in Western Canadian cash natural gas prices, driven by mild demand and ample supply. AECO hub prices, which were strong earlier this year, have declined since June and now match last year’s levels. The persistent imbalance between supply and demand continues to weigh on the regional market, especially during the summer when excess gas struggles to find an outlet. Figure 1 | NGI Cash Prices: AECO hub and West Coast Station 2, 2024-Present On the supply side, Alberta’s Nova receipts rebounded in July after a dip in June but remain relatively high compared to prior years. Meanwhile, demand components such as AB Intra consumption and Empress exports have been mostly flat year-over-year. Mild weather and ... » read more | |
| Monday Jul 21, 2025 | |
| Despite a couple days of mild weather, we are in the dog days of summer. Across the power industry, this means tight conditions and careful decisions to make the most of present opportunities while avoiding undo risk. This is especially true for the West’s hydro. Here, the seasonal high for power demand overlaps with the seasonal low for precipitation, meaning that H2O needs to be used very carefully. In this blog, we focus on the current situation within California. ... » read more | |
| Friday Jul 18, 2025 | |
| There have been a slew of reports surrounding the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) on renewable development in the U.S. Estimates of cutting the build-out of new clean power by over 50% as reported by the Rhodium Group to a 17% decrease in solar as reported by Wood Mackenzie. Other reports show an expansion in gas additions as the economics change. In this Special Report, we take a look at drivers of capacity additions in the WECC in the context of load growth and RPS requirements to frame up how the OBBB may impact renewable energy additions in the western states. The OBBB impacts renewable energy tax credits for wind and solar the most by requiring projects to be in service by the end of 2027 or start construction in the next twelve months and be in service ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jul 17, 2025 | |
| The first six months of 2025 has been solar’s time in the sun. Significant investments in solar build-out have been made in markets across the country from West to South Central to East and over the past half of a year those investments are bearing fruit and showing up in a major way on the grid. CAISO got out to an early lead, but ERCOT followed shortly behind, right on its heels. In the past year it has been PJM and MISO that have made strides to enter the race and make up the lost ground to catch up to their neighbors further to the west. Solar growth is one of the key topics covered in our latest Renewable Quarterly report, “Spring into Sunlight”. Figure 1 | Running Maximum Solar Potential Generation (MW) So with the race ... » read more | |