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| Thursday Sep 28, 2023 | |
| When we sat down at our desks this morning at Energy GPS HQ in Portland, the soft pitter-patter of rainfall against the roof and windows was a gentle reminder that we have left summer behind and that fall has arrived. Later in the day the drizzle had become a torrential downpour, a welcome occurrence after a dry summer in the Pacific Northwest, especially up further north from Portland into British Columbia. In BC, the dryness issues go back to last winter. While the rest of the Northwest south of the border was enjoying relatively strong precipitation (although nothing compared to California’s record snowfall, compliments of a series of atmospheric river events that hit the coast unusually far to the south), BC watch as its snow levels struggled to reach 60% of ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 27, 2023 | |
| The Aliso Canyon storage shut-in starts today. It’s scheduled to last a little more than 2 weeks and will greatly limit SoCal Gas’ injection capability during the last big push to fill before winter. Just last month, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) announced their decision to add 27 BCF of availability capacity to the cavern which has been limited since a 2015 spill. While this shut-in has been listed on SoCal Gas’ Maintenance Outlook for a while now, it was unclear until about two weeks ago whether they would go through with the work given the new capacity to fill. Then on September 15th, the shut-in was made definite as it was added to the Maintenance Schedule and the road to full for Aliso Canyon got a little more complicated. Figure 1 | SoCal Gas ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 26, 2023 | |
| The heat dome that blanketed the South Central all summer has dissipated over the past few weeks, but it still goes without saying that temperatures hitting the low 90’s is still quite warm all things considered, especially at the end of September when the power supply stack is working its way towards planned outages. Figure 1 | ERCOT Net Load Daily Profile – 7 Day Rolling Average Adding some fuel to the fire is the simple fact that the wind generation across the Lone Star State has been a mixture of higher early morning output while the middle of the day and evening ramp continues to be lower. The figure above can be found in the EnergyGPS ERCOT Morning Dashboard, which is part of the South Central Power sub-package and folds into the North American Power and Natural ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 25, 2023 | |
| The month of September has flown as this week presents the last few days left before October takes over on Sunday. This means the transition between summer and fall is upon us as football season is in full gear and the leaves are starting to change colors. One the clocks move back their hour and the leaves start to make their way to the ground, the shift will hit home in a big way. The same is true for the electricity sector as the summer months were filled with extreme heat across the South Central which pushed the natural gas generators to heightened alert and record setting usage for long stints. Now that we are finalizing Q3-2023, the power grids will be in transition where the renewable space will need to be analyzed along with the thermal supply stack planned ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 22, 2023 | |
| Back in the late 1990’s a creative trader wanted to get long the entire US power sector. He put out a request to the brokers for offers in all major power markets for what became known as the “Around the USA” trade. It was a bullish bet on the overall level of US power markets. I hadn’t thought much about that trade in the ensuing years until a new Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) came across my radar over the summer. An outfit called CNIC Funds is behind this ETF, and they are working with ICE to bring the opportunity to buy the entire US electricity commodity sector to retail investors. (https://www.cnicfunds.com/) The ETF launched in May 2023, its ticker is AMPD, and you can log into your brokerage account and buy it. On Wednesday it closed at about $25 per ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 21, 2023 | |
| Throughout August and into the beginning of September, Mother Nature subjected the Lone Star State to unbearable heat. The summer of 2023 has been one of Texas’s hottest summers on record, with several cities hitting 100-degree temperatures for more than 40 days in a row. Our recent Newsletter Special Report, “Scorching Summer” discusses the severity of the recent heat and its impact on ERCOT prices. Every single day in August (and September so far) was hotter than the 5-year average, as illustrated by the figure below, which shows daily average temperatures in the top pane and differences from normal in the bottom pane. Figure 1 | Temperatures, August 2023 To say that these temperatures resulted in consistently high demand for electricity is somewhat ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 20, 2023 | |
| Over the past year, Alberta has seen huge renewable growth. In the summer months, midday solar generation is now frequently surpassing 1 GW of generation. Peak demand in these months is often between 10 and 10.5 GW, which means midday solar is taking on an increasingly larger portion of the supply stack. Wind has also grown year-on-year, up as much as 0.4 GW on average in the evening hours. While this growth is important for the region’s goals for reducing carbon emissions, the variability of these energy sources comes with its own challenges. The combined hourly profile of wind and solar, shown in the third panel, demonstrates the abundance of renewable energy in the middle of the day and the troughs of renewable energy in the morning and evening. We’ve dubbed this same issue ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 19, 2023 | |
| Food cart excursions within the Rose City (Portland) are common as there are several to choose from throughout. One favorite amongst tourists and locals is the establishment called the Asylum. The establishment of food and beverages is named after 19th- century hospital for the mentally ill. The pod’s design mimics such a place as it is surrounded by rock walls and circular barbed wire fence with small windows selectively placed and only one grand entrance. Figure 1 | Portland Food Cart - Asylum Since are over 15 food carts present/open at any time, one could get a bit confused when trying to pick one. This is why they introduced a beverage cart at the entrance and built out a massive firepit set up where a group of individuals can sit around and discuss their ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 18, 2023 | |
| The fallout from last winter continues to be in play when it comes to the decisions around Southern California’s natural gas landscape, specifically SoCal Gas’s storage facility known as Aliso Canyon. If you recall, Mother Nature delivered a cold start to the winter season and the adjacent power regions were dealing with short portfolios as hydro waned and structural power demand was in play. This led to the Pacific Northwest to actual export megawatts from the CAISO grid instead of providing energy during the crucial evening ramp block of hours. The Desert Southwest was just short and leaning on the CAISO grid for its megawatt balancing during the same period. At the end of the day, the storage gas volume was being consumed at a record pace. Figure 1 | ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 15, 2023 | |
| If one’s comfort zone is where dreams go to die, then the dream was alive and kicking in ERCOT this summer while back east, especially NYISO, temperatures and grid conditions were quite a bit more …comfortable. For much of summer 2023, particularly July and August, a regional “heat dome” coupled with rapid recent population growth challenged ERCOT grid operators with record-breaking load and renewable market penetration. But for all the heat, load growth, and supply changes in Texas and the southwest, just as notable is where the heat didn’t show up, specifically the east, PJM, and especially NYISO. If ERCOT grid operators had been looking for a lower-stress job where they might get a little more down time and chance to catch up on reading, NYISO would have ... » read more | |