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| Wednesday Apr 8, 2026 | |
| April 1st marked the beginning of the second quarter of 2026 and the beginning of a new offering from Energy GPS. We are now publishing a daily AESO Transmission dashboard for subscribers interested in the Alberta power market. In this blog, we’ll give you a sneak preview of what you can expect if you sign up to receive this new dashboard straight to your inbox. The following figure is featured in the new dashboard. The blue shaded areas represent imports and exports flowing on the three interties connecting Alberta to BC, Montana, and Saskatchewan. Positives indicate flows into Alberta while negatives show flows out of the province. System flows are the combination of flows from all three interties while BC/Montana represents BC and Montana together. The yellow and red lines show ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Apr 7, 2026 | |
| Outage season in SPP is shaping up very differently this year, with daily outage levels tracking well below last year’s elevated profile and much more in line with 2024. The seasonal build is still evident—ramping into the spring peak—but the magnitude has been notably modest, avoiding the sustained 28-30 GW levels that defined large parts of 2025. Instead, outages this year have largely followed a more measured trajectory, suggesting less aggressive outages stacking across the fleet. The result is a system entering the shoulder period with a little more available capacity than what market participants had to navigate last year. Figure 1 | SPP Daily Outages Looking at the past seven days of hourly fundamentals, load has responded to warmer conditions with daily peaks ... » read more | |
| Monday Apr 6, 2026 | |
| On April 3rd, California reached a record high in renewable energy curtailment, with about 10.8 GW of solar and wind power being curtailed. During the peak hour, solar curtailment hit 10 GW, while wind reduction was at 0.8 GW. Earlier that day, wind curtailment peaked at 1.1 GW, and solar curtailment hovered around 9.7 GW. On Saturday, curtailments were lower because wind output dropped from 4.5 GWa to roughly 2.1 GWa, even though utility-scale solar potential remains above 23.0 GW. Figure 1 | CAISO Curtailment Summary – Hourly From a midday price standpoint, real-time was in negative territory over the entire period while the evening ramp was held in check by the battery fleet. Figure 2 | CAISO SP15 Real-Time Price Summary – Hourly Looking at the chart above, the day-ahead ... » read more | |
| Friday Apr 3, 2026 | |
| The weekend is going to be filled with a tradition like no other, the infamous Easter Egg Hunt!! This is where parents, aunts and uncles strategically place plastic colored eggs around the yard or inside the house. Some ‘hiders’ take the art of placing the eggs very seriously while others are content with emptying their basket and getting on to other activities such as brunch or a mimosa. Figure 1 | Egg Hunting in the Energy Space Once the eggs are all ‘hidden’, the chaos is about to begin as the children gather around, rules are stated and in the blink of an eye they are off. The cheerful excitement can be heard by family members who have jumped into the fray to help the little ones, grandparents who are in the mezzanine section of the yard looking ... » read more | |
| Thursday Apr 2, 2026 | |
| We are now just a day away from the start of spring fish spill for the 2026 water year. Friday the increased spill requirements will kick in for all four of the Lower Snake hydro projects, followed by the Lower Columbia projects on April 10th. These dates represent a significant inflection point each year and this year will be no different, especially given that the robust flows at present mean there is more water in the rivers available to be diverted to spill. Our latest PNW Hydro Flash examines the expected impacts of the upcoming spill against the backdrop of the first strong hydro year in three years. In recent years we’ve seen the strict spill rules butt up against the minimum generation levels at the core 8 projects due to low flow conditions, leaving dam operations in ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Apr 1, 2026 | |
| While the calendar may say April Fools' Day is today, Mother Nature had some early pranks for the Alberta grid last week. After a high wind trend in the middle of the month kept the grid flush with supply and pool prices low, wind generation became more volatile last week. Wind generation had moderate to strong peaks and deep troughs, swinging from over 3 GW to under 0.3 GW sometimes within the same day. On top of the wavy wind profiles, wind also came in under its forecast at several points, pulling a switcheroo on grid operators and contributing to volatile pool pricing. Figure 1 | Market Summary – Forecasts and Actuals (March 22 – 28, 2026) The figure above shows the demand and generation forecasts (lines) along with actual demand and generation (shaded) from last ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 31, 2026 | |
| SPP remains caught between shifting demand and a wind-driven supply stack, leaving the system moving in multiple directions day-to-day. Load has been highly weather-sensitive, with warmer stretches briefly lifting peak demand into the upper 30s GW and low 40s GW before easing under milder conditions. This variability has kept the demand side fluid, particularly during peak hours, and has limited price stability across the footprint. Figure 1 | SPP Daily Profile On the supply side, wind continues to dominate, with real-time generation consistently reaching the mid- to upper-20s GW on average—seasonally typical for March and likely to persist into April. As a result, curtailments have regularly pushed into the 7–8 GW range during peak wind intervals, keeping net load suppressed ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 30, 2026 | |
| For college sports fans, it is the time of year that NCAA Men’s and Women’s basketball rank up there with the college football playoffs for excitement. It is the weekend when teams via a spot in the Final Four, which means there are only two wins left to be crowned National Champions. Each game is played with an intensity that can be felt through the television set and seen on the fans who travel to watch their team live or in the band playing the school fight song on every timeout. On the women’s side, Connecticut was victorious and will be making their 25th trip to the Final Four, where they know the podium well given, they are the reigning champions. UCLA is the other women’s team to book their tickets to Phoenix as they beat a strong Duke team. The other two ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 27, 2026 | |
| This time of year, the ERCOT grid often winds up in a state of oversupply. Wind generation is generally plentiful and demand is relatively low—March is often the lowest-demand month of the year, and among the highest for wind supply. However, volatility can sometimes still arise due to another seasonal extreme: the end of March, plus the first half or two thirds of April, are peak outage season. Figure 1 | ERCOT Daily Average Outages, 2024 – 2026 YTD Outages are easy to overlook when evaluating the state of the grid because they're not immediately visible in demand or generation profiles, but they still influence the supply/demand balance by reducing the amount of available supply. The figure above, which plots year-on-year daily average outages (in units of MW) since ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 26, 2026 | |
| The rush of heat that came to California and the Desert Southwest during last week’s heat dome gave a welcome break to the region’s solar projects while also bringing a massive and unusual surge to late March demand. But as we move further towards the end of March and with the high temperatures already dissipating, the (downward) pressure is coming back to both solar as well as California thermal. We discussed the heat dome, its effects and the changes coming to the Southwest in a CAISO market flash earlier this week. The figure below is taken from the Energy GPS CAISO Net Load Summary Dashboard and plots a 7-day moving average for round-the clock net load within the ISO. The widespread, intense, and unusual heat reversed the typical downward trend in net load for CAISO for ... » read more | |