MenuFeatured Articles
| Monday Nov 7, 2022 | |
| If you recall, this past Labor Day weekend put on display some heat that pushed the CAISO power demand profile to the brink of disaster. If it were not for the simple fact that the CAISO pushed real-time alerts to consumers for conservation, who knows how things would have turned out. These are the times we are currently dealing with as Mother Nature continues to deliver extreme weather events that test both the power and natural gas grids across the country. This week the script is tied to winter-like weather, not the scorching heat. Figure 1 | 15-Day Pacific Northwest Degrees from Normal Forecast Matrix The Pacific Northwest is looking at their overnight lows dipping down into the low 20’s and the further north you travel the individuals living there are looking ... » read more | |
| Friday Nov 4, 2022 | |
| Without ever spending much time in the spotlight, SPP is managing to rack up intervals where the amount of wind generation exceeds the total demand, which has been highlighted in the EnergyGPS daily content delivered to clients along with the Newsletter Platinum Plus Renewable Monthly Report, titled 'September/October - Gone With the Wind Part 2'. As we roll into the month of November, the situation continues to worsen if you are a wind generator sitting on the front line as the North zone sends a negative price signal in the early morning hours as the only option is to curtail the renewabe resource. Down in the South region, we see more local issues as the generation cannot get to the demand centers thus other resources, such as natural gas units, are needed to balance the ... » read more | |
| Thursday Nov 3, 2022 | |
| One week ago we wrote about the transition about to occur in the PNW hydro system. With the month of October giving way to November, the annual Chum operation was coming back around, which marks a switch from operations to refill the reservoir at Grand Coulee Dam to extra releases from the dam in order to increase the flows and elevation further downriver. Over the past week, things have played out as we described with Grand Coulee outflows doubling from 52 kcfs on the 30th to over 100 kcfs this Tuesday. River flows also received some help from the weather as the Pacific Northwest also saw some decent precipitation move into the region, as every Portlander who had the pleasure of drying off sopping wet children and their costumes after making the Halloween ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Nov 2, 2022 | |
| Grid operators felt tricked in Alberta this Halloween as the wind fell below the forecast. The grid was already expecting some tightness for the morning ramp with wind generation expected to fall from 1.5 GW early in the morning to 0.4 GW by noon. Instead, wind played its trick by dropping to a meager 0.2 GW by hour ending 10 and under 0.1 GW by hour ending 12. Net load, shown in the third panel down in Figure 1, was supposed to peak under 9.7 GW, but instead pushed up to 10 GW with wind slowing ramping up over the next few hours. Figure 1 | Load, Wind, Net Load, Thermal Outages, and Prices Power prices signaled the scarcity by shooting into the triple-digits. As the wind fell in the morning, price moved past the forecasted pool price by more than $50 starting in hour ending 6. » read more | |
| Tuesday Nov 1, 2022 | |
| When the Freeport rupture occurred back in June it threw the entire natural gas market into a tailspin. in its wake the facility would be shut down for an extended duration as safety concerns itemized by the PHMSA were addressed. As a result 2 BCF per day of rejected feed gas was backed into the Gulf balancing helping the storage balances to recover from a very large year on year deficit. The last time Freeport LNG LLC provided an update to its return was back on August 23 when they predicted a start up date in early to mid November with full operations by the end of the month. Well, November is upon us and there have been no further updates from Freeport which leads us to believe that the restart continues to be on track per the original time line. But we caveat the sentiment that the ... » read more | |
| Monday Oct 31, 2022 | |
| Everyone has been in a predicament where some at-home project has gone sideways to which you rush to the local hardware store to see if they have the solution. In a bigger project, it usually boils down to not having the right tool for the job, to which makes running to the hardware store look easy. After a few hours of using the wrong tools, the time is now to google search the nearest tool rental shop to see if they have it at the neighborhood store or is it at the one a few miles further down the road. When the person on the other end of the phone call states “yes, we have the equipment at this store. Would you like me to hold it for you?” The question had only one answer, “yes please, I will be right over”. Figure 1 | The Right Tool for the ... » read more | |
| Friday Oct 28, 2022 | |
| This fall I’ve hit the road again to some favorite upland bird hunting spots in Eastern Montana and Eastern Oregon in search of Grouse, Partridge, and Pheasant. While on the road I noticed a change in the technology and supply chain of wind turbines. In Shelby Montana, we saw enormous wind turbines being shipped via railway. These turbines were not only very large, but they had spikes on roughly the lower third of the wind blade. After some speculation we turned to Google and found that these are primarily for noise reduction. Siemens calls their technology “DinoTails”[1] and started using them in 2000 (guess I’ve never noticed). These are used to help meet noise regulations at sites and thus produce more energy instead of operating at ... » read more | |
| Thursday Oct 27, 2022 | |
| Mid-C has continued to hold its own in the West this week, even with plentiful wind showing up in the Pacific Northwest as well as the DC line outage reducing export capacity. This strength continues to be on the heels of colder weather that is displayed via the power demand profiles across the region. With PNW pricing hanging in there for the time being, the end of October is bringing a significant change to hydro operations that will pose a further challenge and threaten to flip the script to the structural power demand growth in the region? The change starts with the chum operations here at the end of the month and continues into the month of November. We are staring at a forecast that includes a precipitation pattern that has been avoiding the region up until this ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Oct 26, 2022 | |
| October 1st is the date that shifts the mindset in the power sector from that of the summer months (Q3) to that of the fall (Q4) where the start to winter is right around the corner. The date also has importance when it comes to the hydro systems across the West as it is the time of year that things get reset and a new Water Year begins for the Pacific Northwest, California, and the Desert Southwest/Rockies. Now we know the rivers never stop flowing, but it does give the federal agencies running the systems to take inventory of their storage levels, revamp any non-energy requirements (like fish constraints) and gather as much information as possible to what Mother Nature might have in store with the current longer-term weather forecast. Part of October is spent on making ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Oct 25, 2022 | |
| Sailing into the wind is an expression used on the high sea by experience captains navigating the waters at sea. It often is referred to in the sailing circles as a boat's ability to move forward even if it is headed into the wind. Since it is nearly impossible to sail directly into the wind, the boat operators must angle their sail in a slightly forward direction than the sail force. It is then and only then that the boat moves forward as the keel of the boat acts to the water in a similar fashion as the sail acts to the wind. Translating it to nautical/physics terms, the sail is balanced by the force of the keel and keeps boat moving in the right direction. When it comes to the energy sector, the SPP system operators is the captain of the balancing ship known as ... » read more | |