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| Tuesday Oct 10, 2023 | |
| The CAISO power market overlays itself on both PGAE and SoCal’s natural gas infrastructure where the molecules either show up from pipeline transport capacity or withdrawing from the storage facilities within each respective region during the hot summer months or in the heart of winter. This past August, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) voted to allow another 27 BCF to be injected into Aliso Canyon’s facility. Starting in September, the system operators initiated anywhere from .280 to .375 BCF per day to be put into the cavern. Figure 1 | Aliso Canyon Storage Volume Trajectory – Daily Despite the newly minted demand within SoCal Gas’s system, the transport volume and other demand aided in keeping SoCal Citygate prices muted to ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 9, 2023 | |
| The month of October is delivering a little rally in the natural gas market as the prompt month has moved up from the $2.76 level seen during the last week of September to just under $3.40. The $0.64 uptick is quite impressive all things considered but with winter right around the corner. What we learned throughout the summer months on the power side gives concern when it comes to the natural gas market balancing act. Figure 1 | Prompt Month Nymex Settle vs. HDD/CDD Levels In the most recent Platinum Plus Monthly Recap report (‘End the Madness’), we made the rounds throughout the power grid to display the power in the burns and exposure of all markets during the evening ramp block now that solar generation is more present in markets like Alberta, California and ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 6, 2023 | |
| Long-time readers of this blog know that I, Tim Belden, coordinate an annual Aluminum Man competition held once per year somewhere in or near Oregon. This year was our 15th competition – 40 brave souls have participated over the years. The only energy-related content in this blog will be the names and scores of three people from “the biz” who participated in the competition. I’ll give a rundown of the games and results. This year’s event was held in BZ Corner, Washington about an hour and a half east of Portland. The axe, depicted above, is the trophy that is awarded each year with the name of the “winner” being engraved on a plaque and added to the handle of the axe. Let’s start with the basics. The event is called “Aluminum ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 5, 2023 | |
| The time has come around again for a new water year to begin and there are topics of interest ranging from the short term to the long. The Pacific Northwest is coming off of a lower-than-normal water year where total unregulated flows for the January to July period totaled just 80.3 MAF, 77% of the 30-year average of 103.7. For the entire October-September period, the 2023 water year was only slightly higher at just under 76% of normal and a total of 100.3 MAF. The fall and winter played out with plenty of precipitation and snowfall across most of the Pacific Northwest, but the only exception was a crucial area. Up in British Columbia, the area that determines the majority of total flows for the PNW hydro system, snowpack was extremely low, and that set in motion ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 4, 2023 | |
| On September 24th, the CAISO fleet hit a new peak dispatch of over 5 GW. It was a sign of both the growth of the fleet, as well as the conditions of the day. The figure below is featured in our daily CAISO Battery Dashboard from September 30th. The blue and orange shaded sections represent the net charge and discharge of the fleet respectively while the black line shows SP15 real-time price. The 24th was a Sunday with negative midday prices and a large price spike in the evening. It’s the ideal price shape for capturing real-time arbitrage for batteries that tend to charge midday, dispatch a little in the morning, and dispatch a lot in the evening. The fleet only discharged around 3 GW in response to the highest price of the day, but when price peaked a second time less than an hour ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 3, 2023 | |
| The transition to renewable resources is something that has evolved over time and specific regions have their respective technology footprint that works its way into the power supply stack and all the analysis around the implied heat rate that reflects the marginal megawatt needed to balance the grid. The marginal megawatt could come in the form of a natural gas-fired generator or the need to curtail the renewable megawatt we are striving to increase in the coming years. The former takes on a level between 8.0 and 14.0 depending on how high one has to go into the gas stack while the later turns to a level that starts out driving the implied heat rate below the levels mentioned and ultimately shift into negative territory as the outright auction price settle goes crosses over ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 2, 2023 | |
| October brings with it leaves changing colors and a nice crispness to the air as the overnight lows shift lower while the daytime highs do not seem as extreme despite days where temperatures can still top the 90-degree level across the Lower 48. This is going to be the case this week in California as the model runs have some heat showing up starting on Tuesday and lasting into the weekend. With one of the Diablo Canyon nuclear units offline for its planned refueling maintenance, the power grid is losing roughly 1.1 GWa of baseload energy. Figure 1 | October is Fall Season The good news for the CAISO system operators is the Hunt for Red October should not be feared as much as the Hunt for Flex October is the new best-selling novel on the market. The latest Special ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 29, 2023 | |
| The month of September is about to come to a close, and with the end of the third quarter comes the expectation that cooler temperatures will arrive. The hope is that the fall weather will bring some relief from the high load brought on by the summer heat, and, in ERCOT, that wind generation will pick back up. Figure 1 | ERCOT Wind and Solar 12x24 Profiles, 2021 – 2023 YTD In the figure above, which is part of our ERCOT Real Time Dashboard, the top pane shows monthly/hourly average wind generation, the middle pane shows solar, and the bottom shows the combination of the two, from 2021 – the present. This is a graph that we discuss with some regularity, often in the context of the HE20 problem, and the item that we want to highlight today is the overall average level of ... » read more | |
| 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 | |