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| Thursday May 8, 2025 | |
| With the robust growth in solar capacity in markets with traditionally low market penetration, we are starting to see more and more volatility introduced to the daily balancing equation on the supply side from renewables in ISOs such as MISO and PJM. Those who work in ERCOT or CAISO will be very familiar with the swings that can occur from day to day in such markets, but it is relatively new elsewhere. This dynamic was front and center in PJM this past month, after a stretch of cool and overcast weather early in April gave way to sunnier, warmer conditions in the second half of the month. The changes to solar this spring in PJM and its impact on PJM as a whole was the topic of our latest Special Report, “PJM’s Solar (Spring)board”. Figure 1 | PJM Daily ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 7, 2025 | |
| On Monday night, Alberta pool price shot to $825/MWh as wind dropped low in the late evening hours. High demand was not a factor, as peak demand on Monday night stayed under 10 GW. The province has been enjoying mild and warmer-than-normal temperatures so far this May. High thermal outages, however, did factor in. On Monday, more than 3.6 GW of gas plants were offline. In the middle of the day, solar demand reached 1.7 GW. Wind generation started out the morning providing 3 GW and then dropped to 1 GW by midday. By HE 20, wind generation dropped under 0.1 GW. Net load, calculated as demand minus solar and wind, peaked at 9.4 GW. With a good portion of the thermal stack offline, Alberta had no choice but to send a price signal that attracted as many megawatts as possible. Figure 1 | AESO ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 6, 2025 | |
| As summer approaches, one of the key priorities in the natural gas market is to inject sufficient volumes into storage ahead of the following winter season. However, current market fundamentals reveal notable uncertainties, sparking a wide range of discussions across the power sector across the Lower 48. These include tariffs, rising structural power demand driven by data centers, the renewable growth, and the evolution of LNG demand—which has stabilized between 15-15.5 Bcf/d and continues to grow across parts of Canada. All of this underscores the need to carefully monitor supply, demand, and regional dynamics to better understand where the market is headed. Figure 1 | Lower 48 Power Burns, 2023–Present A major recent topic has been power burns, which have remained lower ... » read more | |
| Monday May 5, 2025 | |
| Spring outage season is always a time when planned maintenance is needed as units push through the winter months and look to be prepared for the higher power demand months known as summer. The transition period between April and June exposes the grid in a way if/when Mother Nature wants to deliver some heat that pushes the peak power demand higher, which will be in play this upcoming week in California and the Pacific Northwest Figure 1 | CAISO Peak Power Demand Actuals and Forecast Sticking to the Golden State, the grid is looking at rising peak demand numbers (blue bars in Figure 1) with Southern California leading the charge later in the week while the northern part of the state is holding steady for the most part. The grid has its solar influx and battery capacity to keep ... » read more | |
| Friday May 2, 2025 | |
| Not trying to brag, but I (Andrew Kasius) can swim. Freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, doggie paddle, side stroke, dead man’s float: all good. But the butterfly? I can do it, but it isn’t pretty. After 30 seconds of causing massive waves that overflow pools, annoy other swimmers, erode shorelines and I’m beginning to breathe water, I’m done. I go above the water, I gasp for air, I go below the water, I think about my life choices… and then repeat. I had a high school friend who, as inelegant as he was on land, was amazing in the water doing this stroke. When done well, it looks great as shown in Figure 1 below, but for me it is pretty much the most unrelaxing way to move through water that doesn’t include getting ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 1, 2025 | |
| With April now squarely in the rear-view mirror, the shift is already underway for the PNW hydro system. The arrival of May now largely puts flood-risk management (FRM) behind us as the focus transitions from clearing up enough storage space behind the system’s dams now that April 30 targets have been reached to catching the new water as it melts and flows down into the river system. Earlier this week on Tuesday the Army Corps of Engineers posted updated FRM guidance that finalized the dates to begin refill operations at each storage project. There has been some movement back and forth over the past week particularly for Grand Coulee. At this time last week the plan was to draft the project down only as far as required to reach the April 30 elevation target ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 30, 2025 | |
| One month into Q2 and MISO is already seeing some summer-like temperatures. Over the last several days, MISO South has had above-normal temperatures with highs close to 90 degrees in some cities. On Monday, MISO North joined in with aggregate highs close to 80 degrees along with thunderstorms and a severe weather alert. At the end of the day, real-time demand reached the highest point so far this quarter at 83.4 GW. In the summer, MISO can expect 100 GW+ demand days, but in spring, days like this can quickly tighten as many plants are offline for maintenance. Figure 1 | MISO Market Summary – Forecast and Actuals Ultimately, the grid was able to handle the extra spring demand without prices skyrocketing. Wind generation was quite strong, averaging over 20 GW while solar provided 10 ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 29, 2025 | |
| As we approach the end of spring and transition into the summer season, the renewable energy landscape is set to undergo a shift as weather patterns change. Wind generation traditionally experiences a significant decline as summer approaches. This seasonal dip is visualized in figure 1 below across some major ISOs, including ERCOT, MISO, PJM, and SPP, where wind generation tends to drop off in May. The wind generation shows clear differences in how the years compare as we approach the summer season. The volatility in wind generation is especially evident during May and June. Figure 1 illustrates this fluctuation, showing years with relatively strong wind output, while others experience low volumes. This variability highlights the challenges in predicting wind energy availability during ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 28, 2025 | |
| Sunny southern California is known for many things, one being traffic. Usually this refers to freeways and cars. This year, it also applies to natural gas pipelines. We have seen an impressive run of High OFO events, where excess volume is scheduled on the pipe, forcing the utility to issue penalties which are meant to reduce traffic and maintaining the systems operation integrity. This traffic jam is not so mundane as it points to the changing landscape of SoCal’s power and natural gas components such as continued solar growth, the addition of batteries and the third consecutive good water year in the Golden State. Figure 1 | SoCal High OFO Days prior to April 28th The table above gives us a comparison of High OFO risk by year. Each value represents the numbers of days in which ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 25, 2025 | |
| The updated California Energy Demand (CED) 2024 - 2040 forecast was released as of late last month. The chart below shows the annual CED planning forecasts for the past two years, broken into a statewide and CAISO systemwide total. To summarize how aggressive things are getting beyond 2030, the Statewide 2023 Forecast is similar to the CAISO 2024 Forecast by the out years. Figure 1 | CED Annual Planning Forecast, Total Energy to Serve Load (MWa, Statewide and CAISO, 2023 and 2024) The figure below shows baseline net load growth by year (California ISO, not statewide total). Data centers have been hyped for some time now, but this is the first year that the CED forecasts have included data centers as an explicit source of load. By 2030, 2,200 MWs of data center load growth is ... » read more | |