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| Thursday Apr 30, 2026 | |
| Yesterday’s blog post delved into the nation’s nuclear fleet and the winding down of spring outage season as many units have already completed their spring refueling and maintenance and, of the 15 plants still offline, almost all are scheduled to complete their refueling cycle and come back online within the next several weeks. Already this week we saw PJM’s Quad Cities 2 plant roar back to life but nuclear output is still very much in a state of flux as PJM saw its overall nuclear generation falter in the middle of the day yesterday as it sputtered from 27.1 GW down to below 26.6 GW before starting to climb back up. Figure 1 | PJM Generation Outages, 5-Day Moving Average (MW) In fact, while some ISOs are following a typical path for the spring outage season and are ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 29, 2026 | |
| The spring nuclear outage season is winding down after reaching a peak over 22.6 GW offline last week. Last Monday’s high outpaced last spring’s peak by a gigawatt and spring 2024 by two gigawatts. It also came later in the month of April versus a peak at the end of March last year and earlier in April in 2024. Over the month of May, nuclear outages should continue to fall as nuclear plants wrap up their regular maintenance and refueling. This coincides with cooling degree days increasing along with demand needs in regions across the country. Figure 1 | US Nuclear Outages Year-on-Year (MW) As of yesterday, there are still more than 15 nuclear plants 100% offline for refueling along with a handful of unplanned outages or plants ramping on or off from refueling. There are still ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 28, 2026 | |
| April has brought a clear divergence in load trends across the Southwest Power Pool footprint, with the North and South hubs moving in different directions relative to March and recent years. In March, North Hub demand stood out on the stronger side of the historical range, with 2026 levels consistently outperforming both 2024 and 2025. That strength has faded as we’ve moved into April, where milder weather across the northern footprint has pulled demand lower, now tracking closer to 2024 levels and running below last year on a sustained basis. The result is a noticeably softer northern load profile compared to just a few weeks ago, signaling how quickly weather-driven fundamentals can shift the market conditions. Figure 1 | SPP Load 12x24 Profile By contrast, the South Hub has ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 27, 2026 | |
| California’s natural gas storage levels were high entering Q2-2026. This was because Mother Nature delivered a mild winter and the previous year continued to place a premium to the heart of winter thus incentivizing entities to fill the caverns to the brim. This is a common practice for all storage operators across the world but when it comes to the Golden State, it meant that PGAE’s total gas volume was higher than previous years as they opened up more capacity while SoCal Gas has the CPUC to thank for adjusting Aliso Canyon’s listed capacity in the summer of 2023. All told, the mild winter and the increased storage capacity is looking for demand to consume volume, which is hard to come by within the power sector as solar generation continues to be plentiful and battery ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 24, 2026 | |
| Our long-term Production Cost Modeling (PCM) in the WECC seeks to meet growing demand with existing and candidate resource options subject to reliability and policy constraints. Each of these presents a unique opportunity for modeling. First, Load growth is highly uncertain with large swings in data center, transportation electrification, and energy efficiency assumptions. Second, existing resources shift constantly with announced retirements, additions, and revised retirements. Finally, emerging technologies for candidate resource options change with many utilities now considering Small Nuclear Reactors (SMR), and long-duration storage as options. In our latest PCM Market Tracking content titled “Shifting Coal Retirements” we explored the resource mix in the WECC in terms of ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 23, 2026 | |
| Behind-the-meter solar capacity has grown steadily for the past several years in New York and New England, even outpacing utility scale solar. NYISO reports total BTM capacity daily, and the growth is plotted in the figure below. While ISONE saw its utility scale solar maximum output rise by approximately 100 MW during each of 2024 and 2025, the ISO added approximately 500-700 MW of BTM solar capacity, with actual output reaching a high of 4.2 GW last spring, compared to 900 MW for utility scale. NYISO has likewise experienced significant behind-the-meter growth, adding 800 MW in 2024, 700 MW during 2025, and a further 200 MW so far in 2026. This growth does not show up as directly in the daily balancing analysis but is contributing to increased volatility from day to day within both ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 22, 2026 | |
| Ever wonder how much is flowing on the interties in and out of MISO? Or, Interested in which balancing authorities are giving or receiving megawatts from MISO? Energy GPS is now offering a daily MISO Transmission dashboard that gives provides insight into the hourly activity associated to market participant schedules in the day-ahead market. The figure below was featured in yesterday’s MISO transmission dashboard. It shows day-ahead planned transmission over the last week in and out of the three major MISO regions: North, South, and Central. Imports into MISO are positive while negatives represent out megawatts flowing out the region. In the last week, South MISO has mostly exported, and Central MISO has mostly imported while North MISO has seen a mixture of the two. If ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 21, 2026 | |
| South Central gas markets exited winter with a modest softer tone, as power-sector demand failed to match prior-year levels for much of the first quarter. Even during periods of colder weather, the lift in gas burns was brief and faded quickly, pointing to a system that required less gas overall. This wasn’t due to a lack of electricity demand—total load still reached typical winter peaks—but rather the growing impact of renewables and less harsh winter conditions. Stronger wind and solar generation, supported by continued capacity additions, consistently reduced net load and displaced gas-fired generation, keeping overall gas demand modest. Figure 1 | South Central 7-Day Moving Average Profile As spring unfolded, the market began to stabilize, but the same structural ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 20, 2026 | |
| I’m not a big AC guy. In the summer I prefer open windows, sounds of birds, a breeze maybe, and I don’t mind sweating it out a little bit on warm summer nights. If it gets too hot, then usually a fan in the bedroom will do it for me. But I live in a democratic household where my wife and I each get one vote and according to our bylaws, the vote of the matriarch breaks all ties. We live in an older home, built in 1905, with deep awnings, a great wraparound front porch but smaller closets and bathrooms and importantly, no central AC like newer homes have. So, the annual debate comes down to when exactly I’m going to install the window AC units as the weather begins to warm. I generally push for some time in mid-August or never (Figure 1), while my wife usually votes for ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 17, 2026 | |
| Higher daytime highs this early in the spring are not a common occurrence across the Northeast but no worries as Mother Nature is bringing back moderate temperatures heading into the weekend. This past week has seen an uptick in prices across Northeast ISOs as planned outages to both generation and transmission swung the make-up of the supply stacks. This leads to entities that once were sending megawatts across the transmission lines to keep volume at home, which then results in the higher marginal cost of energy. The good news for the power entities that saw their peak load values increase to create shortness is that spot natural gas prices are modest as the molecules do not have to compete with any sort of heating demand. Figure 1 | ISONE Peak Load Actuals and Forecast – ... » read more | |