Featured Articles
| Thursday Jun 1, 2017 | |
| We have been writing about the water year in the Pacific Northwest for some time. The major theme was tied to the Snake River basin getting plenty of snow early while the Above Grand Coulee basin lagged. That was until February when the precipitation pattern dumped a tremendous amount of snow in Upper Washington, parts of Montana and British Columbia. This ... » read more | |
| Wednesday May 31, 2017 | |
| Through the majority of this spring the grid was tormented by unusually large amount of nuclear outages. The total amount of generation offline peaked at a little more than 25 GWs for the end of April which marked the highest outage total since 2013. Through the back half of May we have seen a rush of units return to the grid as nearly 10 GWs of ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 30, 2017 | |
| Weeks ago we made note of the increased polarization of the different reporting sectors in the natural gas market as depicted by the Commodity Futures trading Commission (CFTC) weekly report. Prior to this past week, we saw a series of increases in the Money Managers position taking it to multi year highs and by far the largest position outside of the Swap Dealers. The Money ... » read more | |
| Friday May 26, 2017 | |
| On Wednesday of this week, I spoke at a Northwest Power Market conference here in Portland, where the theme was just that "Northwest Power Markets: Mapping the Road Ahead". My panel was the first to go, where the theme was 'Drivers of Change'. As we all know, the topic of conversation these days is not about what is going on in the Pacific Northwest ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 25, 2017 | |
| Earlier in the week, areas around Portland topped the 90 degree mark as a mini heat wave moved through the region. This was long overdue as the entire spring seemed to give us below normal temperatures and plenty of precipitation. In fact, the 48 hour stretch of nice weather was just enough time for the natives to complain that is was actually too hot. » read more | |
| Wednesday May 24, 2017 | |
| Since May 5th we have continued to see Zone A congestion over the majority of the on-peak hours. The sudden resurgence of Zone A congestion was likely the result of NYISO switching from winter to summer thermal ratings for transmission ties in the Niagara/Buffalo region. Figure 1 | Niagara - Packard vs Packard ... » read more | |
| Tuesday May 23, 2017 | |
| Each day we are tasked with balancing the different supply and demand components across the Lower 48 in an effort to track the storage activity. It is a monumental task that utilizes an enormous amount of data from pipelines and storage operators. One of the components we compile data for is tied to the amount of gas that gets imported from Canada. We break the pipeline ... » read more | |
| Monday May 22, 2017 | |
| Now that we are in the back half of May and June is right around the corner, the power loads are going to come into play across the Lower 48. This will directly tie into the power burn component of the Natural Gas supply/demand balance. In recent years, the influx of Renewables across the country has made us look at the power burns from a net load perspective. » read more | |
| Friday May 19, 2017 | |
| On May 1st the CAISO published a report entitled "Flexible Resource Adequacy Criteria and Must Offer Obligations -- Phase 2. Revised Straw Proposal -- Short Term Solutions." The title alone can put the reader to sleep. Despite the dry title and ... » read more | |
| Thursday May 18, 2017 | |
| If you have been tracking the weather in the Pacific Northwest this spring, it would not surprise you that there is plenty of snowpack still left up in the mountains as we head into the last half of May. The reason for all this snowpack is tied to the below normal temperatures we have been having as well as plenty of precipitation in a month that is suppose to bring us ... » read more | |
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