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| Monday Dec 11, 2023 | |
| The West natural gas market has done everything in its power to be ready for the 2024 winter months as the previous year was one for the ages. This meant that the CPUC ok an additional 27 BCF of capacity to Aliso Canyon while PGAE made sure their caverns were at a robust level as November rolled around. Fast forward to the middle of December 2023 and things look to be in good shape as the natural gas molecules are plentiful given the transport capacity is holding near the nameplate numbers not seen for a couple of years. Figure 1 | Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Levels – Daily The graph above illustrates the Aliso Canyon storage levels since August 2021 (blue line) through the current period (red line). The two step levels, November 2021, and September through ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 8, 2023 | |
| Over the years, California has been front and center in the discussions tied to renewable penetration as their portfolio standard was the first of its kind in the Lower 48. Since the inception of the standard, the CAISO grid has seen all technologies come into play starting with wind then progressing to that of solar (both behind the meter and utility-scaled). Realizing that harvesting the sun's rays was beneficial, there comes a point that a new technology was needed on the hours that held the highest power demand and a darkness that eliminated the solar generation. The technology is no other than utility-scaled batteries being placed on the grid and eventually being an active part of the real-time price discussion. While these conversations are taking place ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 7, 2023 | |
| Now almost a full week into December, looking back at November in CAISO shows a situation that has the value of solar power struggling for the third month in a row. We’ve written about this topic previously in a Newsletter Special Report, “Capturing the Roller Coaster Ratio”. The discussion continues in our latest Newsletter Renewable Monthly, “November 2023 – Wind Weakness, Solar Strength”. California during November continued to enjoy moderate weather along with healthy conditions on the supply side to produce a relatively loose market in CAISO. The key piece underlying everything is the healthy natural gas supply including significant year-on-year increases to transport into both SoCal’s system as well as flows from ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 6, 2023 | |
| Lake Mead’s elevation has risen above 2021 levels in the last few days. At 1,065 feet, the lake is more than 20 feet higher than last year at the start of December and almost 25 feet over its lowest point. Lake Mead sits behind Hoover Dam along the Colorado River. After a decades-long megadrought, this year’s influx of rain and snow from a series of atmospheric rivers has given the lake a much-needed boost. Figure 1 | Lake Mead Elevation in Feet Year-on-Year The end of 2022 and beginning of 2023 were busy with meetings, planning, and heated discussions over the fate of Hoover and Glen Canyon dams. Both lakes behind the dams were at their lowest points with Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon getting close to the minimum level for power generation and dead pool status. The ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 5, 2023 | |
| The power market continues to see volatility within markets that have a high capacity of wind generation, which includes both SPP and ERCOT. Both markets started the week off with low generation output from the turbines only to now transition into a world where the net load numbers are low enough for the market balancing models to resort to negative settles which triggers curtailments or a stoppage of thermal generation to run around the clock, Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Breakdown – Hourly The graph above represents the ERCOT net load breakdown where the upcoming days are going to be taking on a different tone as the large blue shaded area represents that of wind output with the brighter shade tied to the past week while the honed blue region is that of the next seven days. ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 4, 2023 | |
| Sipping coffee and watching the morning news over the weekend delivered the words ‘atmospheric river system’ both Saturday and Sunday as the Pacific Northwest coastal region was getting battered like no other. The weather pattern made its way to Portland and Seattle with Saturday morning highlighting the weekend event as several inches of rain fell in less than an hour. Flooding at every intersection was on display as the street was filled with leaves that covered all the city drain grates. As I walked my dog that Saturday morning, one intersection stood out as there were three electric cars that ventured through the puddle that looked shallow only to find out that the depth level was more than 18 inches deep and the vehicles stalled. Waiting for a tow ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 1, 2023 | |
| The Western Power Pool (WPP) Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP) is marching along into the 2024 Summer non-binding Forward Showing (FS). The FS is where the WRAP estimates supply/demand balances for the regions covered by the WRAP which include much of the non-California west as shown below in Figure 1. Figure 1 | WRAP participants as of 2/24/2023. Source: https://www.westernpowerpool.org/private-media/documents/2023-02-24_WRAP_Webinar.pdf The timeline for the WRAP implementation is shown below in Figure 2. This schedule has the non-binding FS Summer 2024 data available at the end of October. These data have not been made publicly available at the time of this writing, but we expect that the results will not change significantly. The ... » read more | |
| Thursday Nov 30, 2023 | |
| The hydro outlook got a lifeline over the holiday weekend as after several weeks with increasingly dry forecasts, a weather system moved into the 10-day forecast that should deliver some much-needed precipitation to the region. The water is still a day away, but starting Friday and lasting through the middle of next week the Northwest should see eastern Washington and northern Idaho down through the Lower Snake in southern Idaho received precipitation at 150% of normal or more. The area west of the Cascades is expected to get slammed as usual, but even Canada will be in the mix with blue and green coloration extending into BC in the crucial areas that determine flows into BC Hydro’s large storage projects and then down into the Columbia main stem. Figure 1 | 10-Day ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Nov 29, 2023 | |
| Last November was marked by colder than normal weather in both California and the Pacific Northwest. The cold, along with a low hydro year and other factors, led to chaos in the natural gas market and concern over natural gas storage levels in California. This November shaped up quite differently. Temperatures have been mostly above normal in the Golden State, outside of a bit of chill this past week. The figure below shows California’s cumulative HDDs for November and December since 2017. The current year sits at a similar level to 2018 and 2021 while last year was by far the coldest in the seven year period. Figure 1 | Cumulative Monthly HDDs for November and December in California (2017-2023) In addition to the weather, there has been several changes to the supply stack with the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Nov 28, 2023 | |
| The past couple of days have delivered the coldest temperatures of the 2024 winter season year-to-date where the Midwest is looking at single digit overnight lows with highs in the upper teens. If you move further south, the Plains are quite chilly along with the Texas Panhandle and the metro parts of Dallas/Fort Worth. The colder weather has pulled back on the wind generation in both SPP and ERCOT over the past couple of days but that is about to change as warmer temperatures and a shift in the jet stream will couple less power demand with more wind generation on average across the entire day. Figure 1 | SPP Net Load Profile - Hourly There will be moments where the wind volume dips down to create a more pronounced net load value but the periods are minimal and intraday ... » read more | |