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| Wednesday Mar 8, 2023 | |
| Punxsutawney Phil is the official groundhog in Pennsylvania, determining whether six more weeks of winter remain, or an early spring is on the way each February. While several other groundhogs on the East Coast have popped up over the years, Phil’s followers claim him as the true predictor for the Northeast despite a less than stellar track record. This year he saw his shadow, meaning six more weeks of winter for the Northeast. The West Coast doesn’t have any groundhogs to rely on for weather forecasting, so Oregon turns to their official state animal: the beaver. Stumptown Fil, also known as Filbert the beaver, made his yearly prediction this Groundhog’s Day at the Oregon Zoo. Rather than using his shadow, Fil picks his favorite stick with a note tied around the top. He ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 7, 2023 | |
| The end of the natural gas withdrawal season is just weeks away and it is likely that the Lower 48 inventory will end neat 1.9 TCF. That is a surplus over last year’s levels of approximately 500 BCF and puts the end of the injection season on the path to 4 TCF which would be one of the highest refill totals over the past 25 years. There have been plenty of factors that has helped the Lower 48 inventory recover from last spring's inventory levels including a very warm winter and natural gas production gains. But none was bigger than the Freeport LNG rupture from last spring where the liquefaction site kept 2 BCF per day in the Gulf Coast region (record high level of inventory at the beginning of March). Under such conditions in the Lower 48, our neighbors to the found themselves not ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 6, 2023 | |
| SoCal Gas posted the following notice late last week pertaining to the L235 unplanned maintenance issue that showed up a couple of weeks ago. Figure 1 | SoCal Maintenance Notice - L235 As a result of an inline inspection, safety related conditions were identified on Line 235 that necessitated a pressure reduction. Accordingly, on February 16, 2023, the operating capacity of the North Needles Subzone was reduced by 800 MMcf per day, the operating capacity of the North Desert Zone was reduced by 280 MMcf per day, and the operating capacity of the Kramer Junction Subzone was increased by 70 MMcf per day. Validation and remediation activities are ongoing. The preliminary expected completion date of the Line 235 remediation work is March 17, 2023. This preliminary timeline is based on current ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 3, 2023 | |
| From 2019 to 2022, the ERCOT solar market share grew from 1% to 5.5%, and its impact on ERCOT’s previously nonexistent “duck curve” is starting to become apparent. The duck curve is a phenomenon that’s particularly prominent in CAISO, where solar is in excess of 30% of the market share (this metric includes behind-the-meter). Figure 1 | ERCOT Solar Breakdown - Monthly Looking at the graph above, the top pane represents the 'capacity factor' which takes the monthly average generation and divides it by the cumulative potential capacity that is in play within ERCOT. The two components mentioned are on display in the second pane with the blue bars tied to the former while the orange line represents the latter. There is definite growth on display starting in the ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 2, 2023 | |
| Things are changing quickly for the Pacific Northwest Hydro system, with the signs all pointing to an increasingly dire situation for the month of March and into the spring. After a mixed experience over the month of February that included very low levels of precipitation in central Oregon and Washington as well as much of southern Idaho but also some much-needed rain and snowfall up in the higher elevations in British Columbia and the Upper Snake, the outlook is dry for the first 10 days of March. Even with the pockets of strong precipitation high in the system, river flows through the month of February were quite limited, keeping generation quite modest. The figure below shows precipitation for the month of February in the left-hand pane, while the right-hand pane ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 1, 2023 | |
| The cold winter days in Southern California are offering a unique opportunity for SP15 batteries, but the fleet doesn’t seem to be taking the bait. As we saw at the end of the fourth quarter in 2022, blue in the forecast often translates to higher heating demand and higher prices for the morning ramp. We covered how batteries responded in November to the morning price peaks in ‘Batteries and the November Blues’. Now Southern California is facing a 15-day forecast awash with below-normal temperatures through the beginning of March after an unusually wintery weekend with snow falling in LA. The trend of higher SP15 real-time morning prices is present, sometimes even surpassing evening peak prices. With the ongoing cold, the trend looks to continue. In this article ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Feb 28, 2023 | |
| One year ago the Lower 48 natural gas storage situation was vastly different than what has developed this year. The inventory ended the winter season at 1.6 TCF which was below the historical average. But because of the lack of production growth, demand gains and the pull of LNG exports the forecasted inventory for the end of the 2022 injection season was at a historical low of only 3.25 TCF. Along the way to filling last summer a number of changes occurred including the Freeport shut down which backed 2 BCF per day into the storage balancing. From the date of rupture to the end of the injection season the balancing was positively affected by a total of 270 BCF allowing the end of season to end up at 3.6 TCF. This year the inventory does not need a Freeport Hail Mary to have adequate ... » read more | |
| Monday Feb 27, 2023 | |
| The colder weather pattern hit Southern California over the weekend as snow flurries were reported in counties that have not seen such in decades. In the Pacific Northwest, Portland folk woke up to 18-degree temperatures to which is a record for this time of year while Seattle was a few degrees colder. Looking down the Columbia River Gorge, La Grange showed an overnight low of 9 degrees with a high tapping 21 degrees. Watching the local news, the meteorologists described what is in store Sunday morning of which ended up being summarized with 1-4 inches of new snow with the coastal region getting 6-8 inches while inland is not going to see much when it comes to flurries but will remain quite cold. Figure 1 | Atmospheric G2 NWPP ... » read more | |
| Friday Feb 24, 2023 | |
| Back in December of last year, we published a Newsletter Special Report discussing SPP curtailments. At the time, curtailments for 2022 had just reached 10,000,000 total MWh. The year finally ended with right around 15,000,000 MWh of curtailed wind energy. Figure 1 | SPP Renewable Curtailments, 2018 – Present This graph shows cumulative renewable curtailments for each year from 2018 through the present. Since it’s SPP, the curtailed MWh are overwhelmingly wind (solar penetration in SPP has been sitting right around 0.2% for several years). The current year is visible as the brightest blue line, and so far it’s tracking the 2022 curtailments closely. Given this, we wanted to take a closer look at SPP’s wind penetration rates and the corresponding price ... » read more | |
| Thursday Feb 23, 2023 | |
| The attention on CAISO supply stack has been intense so far this winter, with the ISO needing to focus more on within-state generation sources than is typical. We’ve documented over the past six months the transition that is taking place in the West where structural load increases and changes to the Pacific Northwest hydro system such as stricter fish spill requirements have left the Northwest facing tight grid conditions more often than in the past. Throw Washington’s carbon program into the mix as well along with a dry and low 2023 water year and the result is a state of affairs that has Mid-C pricing over California’s hubs on a regular basis. In our recent Newsletter Special Article, “California’s Healthy Hydro”, we dive into ... » read more | |