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| Monday Feb 1, 2021 | |
| MeatLoaf is a band that continues to have their music play on Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora as well as certain Rock Music radio stations across the United States and other parts of the world. One album that grab the attention of many was titled 'Bat out of Hell' which is the 1977 debut by the American rock singer and composer Jim Steinman. Searching on Wikipedia, the story is told that the album was developed from a musical, Neverland, a futuristic rock version of Peter Pan, which Steinman wrote for a workshop in 1974. The next two years were spend recording the album at various studios, including Bearsville Studios, Woodstock, NY and eventually released in 1977 by Cleveland International/Epic Records. The album's musical style is influenced by Steinman's ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 29, 2021 | |
| We've written extensively over the past several months about how the warm and mild winter has affected the natural gas and electricity markets across the country. The weather has taken a turn this week in California, however, as precipitation has blanketed the state, with snowfall in the Sierra mountains, rain in the lower elevations, and even flash flood warnings in the southwest. We also had some snowfall further North at EGPS headquarters earlier in the week, a relatively rare occurrence in Portland. To help us all remember sunnier days in California, let’s turn our attention to CAISO, where solar generation has become an increasingly integral component of the grid over the last several years. Solar capacity in CAISO reached almost 12 GW by the end of ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 28, 2021 | |
| Costco runs are a normal occurrence for many as the wholesale chain has figured out that we need two dozen lemons, twelve muffins, sixteen hamburger patties and a box of forty-eight individually bagged chips just in case anyone in the neighborhood gets hungry. The two items that that fly off the shelf around Christmas time is the packages of AA and AAA Duracell batteries as somehow the marketing team stocking the shelves knows I need thirty-two of each type so they make their way into the cart. Figure 1 | Costco Duracell Battery Packs - AAA As you pass through the checkout line, the bulk batteries make their way into the cart on the other side of the scanner and as you put all the purchases in the back end of your vehicle, the thought of what am I going to really do with ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 27, 2021 | |
| The winter season across the Pacific Northwest and California has been almost obsolete as warmer weather was present in the month of November and December 2020. As we turned the corner, the start of January 2021 was no different as the Pacific Northwest was looking at above normal temperatures to which pushed the precipitation to more rainfall than snowpack at the middle and lower elevation levels. This presented the region with plenty of water on the Westside portion of the hydro system and as you can see in the figure below, it translated into more megawatts hitting the grid. Figure 1 | Westside Hydro Generation - Flat Daily Average The chart in Figure 1 is the daily flat average generation (megawatts) for the Westside region of the Pacific Northwest hydro system. We ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 26, 2021 | |
| California is seeing the coldest temperatures of the year today, which is a stark contrast to that of a week ago when the LA Basin was coming off record daytime highs from Burbank down to Orange County and inland to Palm Springs. With the weather pattern came hurricane type winds that ripped through the hillsides, increased Southern California's output to 4.3 GWa across the heavy load for a couple of days. The combination of the warmer weather and the big push from the renewable wind turbines put a stamp on how the winter season was shaping up through the middle part of January. The bottom line was the heating demand levels were quite low while the power sector has been dealing with economic downturn along with the renewable solar penetration and outlier wind averages ... » read more | |
| Monday Jan 25, 2021 | |
| The first region to really feel the colder weather is Canada as the jet streams from the north dip down into North America. This past weekend is no different as the period in question has been showing colder temperatures across British Columbia and Alberta for the past 10-15 days. As a result, the power grid tightens up quickly as the hourly demand profile is hit with little wind generation, thus shifting the net loads through specific inflection points that warrant real-time prices to escalate towards the cap. You do not have to look any further than Sunday night's evening ramp as the five minute ticks went from clearing $56 to ending HE 16 at $643.32. Figure 1 | Alberta Real-Time Price Action This resulted in the hour ending (HE) 16 clearing $115 while the ... » read more | |
| Friday Jan 22, 2021 | |
| The beginning of a new year is always a great opportunity to reflect on the previous one, and renewable energy is no exception. With so many factors affected by the seasons—load, gas prices, solar irradiance, wind speed—it often requires a whole year to make observations about any given resource. EGPS examined 2020 price and generation data for a wide range of locations across the US in order to find the overall value in $/MWh of solar and wind in each location. In addition to every ISO, the Pacific Northwest[1] is also represented. The table below shows the gen-weighted real-time price and the shape value of the major renewable resource markets in the US. It’s sorted from lowest weighted LMP to highest. Figure 1 | Weighted Real-Time (RT) LMP by ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 21, 2021 | |
| The wind across the Lone Star state has taken it personally that solar started getting all the attention over the summer as the sun shined bright and the cumulative peak output jumped up to over 3.7 GW after ending the 2019 year around 1.8 GW. The graph below illustrates just how the ERCOT cumulative wind generation has been on a tear over the past few months with the 2020 calendar year ending at 22.06 GW compared to the 19.2 GW number in 2019. Figure 1 | ERCOT Wind Generation - Monthly Breakout Looking at the 4th quarter of 2020, a couple of things stick out that are worth noting as they were discussed in our latest Platinum Package Monthly Report, titled 'Rising Star(s)'. The first thing is how the overall monthly average, which is displayed in the bottom pane of ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 20, 2021 | |
| The U.S. LNG market is a bit like the 2007 Major League Baseball season. That year was the first time the league had two division champions who had finished the prior year in last place. The U.S. LNG market is currently posting repeated record-high sendouts this winter thanks to a severe blast of cold weather driving demand market prices to recent highs. This strength is a welcome turnaround for exporters who spent the summer dwelling in the cellars of sharply curtailed sendouts due to negative price spreads to overseas markets. Blasts of record cold weather have been bombarding European and Asian markets since the close of December. This has radically boosted heating gas demand in those markets and to throw a little fuel on the cold mess, record power prices ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 19, 2021 | |
| Some times the prospect of having a long holiday weekend is not as rosy as it seems. Carrying risk into a three day holiday is no fun noting that energy markets can turn on a dime with just one change in the weather modeling. It is hard to have rest and relaxation while the markets are closed in the midst of a large scale change in fundamentals. That is exactly what the natural gas community saw over the past three days. last week the theme was that the blocking in the Atlantic would set the stage for persistent above normal heating load starting during the last week of the month. The natural gas balancing would see its tightest dynamics in nearly two years as ResCom demand would shoot up to 52 BCF per day. There were signs of change in the noon runs on Friday but the larger scale ... » read more | |
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