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| Friday Nov 22, 2019 | |
| Congestion on the grid is sometimes compared to driving on a highway during rush hour. The road can only fit so many cars, and once it reaches its limit, traffic slows down and new cars have a hard time entering. Likewise, due to transmission constraints, all of the low-cost energy that would like to flow to load cannot do so. When this happens, constraints trigger congestion, congestion is resolved economically, and the prices on the “sending” end of the constraint go down – the difference between the hub price and another price is referred to as basis. EGPS considered the basis relative to the SP15 hub for three locations: Palo Verde, Colorado River, and Mead. Mead and Palo Verde are two important import points for the CAISO in Nevada and Arizona respectively, and ... » read more | |
| Thursday Nov 21, 2019 | |
| If you have spent anytime looking at the Western Natural Gas Market over the past 3-4 years, the numbers of days where there was not a critical notice coming out of the SoCal Gas system is minimal. You have to go back to the pre-Aliso Canyon leak days to really see a stable grid where natural gas transport capacity reached the 4.1 BCF mark and there was plenty of injection/(withdrawal) capacity. In fact, the possibility of not having enough gas was so remote that H%$# would almost have to freeze over. Fast forward to today where it seems that with any given 48 hour time period, SoCal Gas can go from sending out a High OFO Critical Notice to that of a Low OFO notice. The volatility that is tied to such swings stems from the lack of supply at times ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Nov 20, 2019 | |
| There are parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas that are known as tornado alley as high and low pressure systems collide across the state lines and massive swirls of wind create cyclones that definitely cause damage within their paths way. Figure 1 | Tornado Alley - North Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas Now that renewables are present in both SPP and ERCOT, the regional section known as Tornado Alley has periods when Mother Nature provides enough wind to where both areas turn into Wind Alley. This week is one of those weeks as both regions are showing extensive wind output by Wednesday/Thursday. Let's take a look at the ERCOT market first as their wind profile will eat away at over half of the power demand profile for a good chunk of the day. The graph below is an hourly ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Nov 19, 2019 | |
| Over the past four years, Texas Eastern has experienced four pipeline ruptures along its Northeast path. The two events that happened this summer have caused additional investigations into the integrity of the pipeline. With safety being the primary concern, Enbridge, the parent owner of TETCO, has cut capacity on two pathways out of the Marcellus producing basin. In total just over 1 BCF of export capacity to both the Gulf and East Coast market areas is being restricted. Most of the market concern has been on downstream balancing issues. Winter basis premiums have soared into the Northeast delivery zones. But another concern is what to do with the volume that is locked into the Marcellus Basin due to the cut in exports. Since the ruptures, storage volumes on the Dominion system have ... » read more | |
| Monday Nov 18, 2019 | |
| If you are receiving/reading this daily blog, you have signed up for the EnergyGPS Newsletter via our website portal. Today's blog is to keep you informed as to some of the most recent articles, monthly reports and the special reports we have published as part of our Newsletter Packages. Before we get into the summary of each, I felt it would be good to layout what each of our packages offer once you subscribe. Newsletter Packages Blog | Free | daily blogs tied to some pertinent topic in the energy market. Silver | $75/month | access to historical blogs via our website portal Gold | $150/month | Silver Package plus access to 40 plus articles written by EnergyGPS staff over the course of the year (average around 4 per month/once per week) Platinum | $250/month | Gold Package ... » read more | |
| Friday Nov 15, 2019 | |
| Last week we framed the battery question in terms of dollars per MWh that would have to be earned in order to make the math work. Today's blog highlights the valuation techniques and results of battery optimization, whereas the EnergyGPS Special Report, titled 'Battery Modeling Using the TB4', dives into detailed analysis around battery optimimization. The special report is included in the EnergyGPS Platinum Package we offer as part of our Newsletter Subscription (Monthly or Annual) or you can by the report a la carte ($500) by clicking on the link tied to the title. When Energy GPS looks at batteries we use a number of valuation techniques including examining regulating reserves payments, simple energy arbitrage payments in various markets, and a more complex forms ... » read more | |
| Thursday Nov 14, 2019 | |
| In football, there are a handful of teams that always seem to walk into the month of November with this notion of not winning a game all season. The Miami Dolphins came to mind in late October as they were actually winless in their first 7 games but have rallied to win 2 in a row. The New York Jets team is flat out bad as their record is also 2-7 with a win earlier in the season before they fell on some hard times. The Cincinnati Bengals are the prize jewel of the group this year as they are currently 0-9 while the Washington Redskins are 1-8. As you can see from each team's record, the wins are few and far between with many winless in November. How does all this NFL talk translate to the energy markets you might ask? The similarity is reflected in the actual ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Nov 13, 2019 | |
| Over the past few weeks, there has been a lot of chatter about the wildfires in California and the rolling blackout plan implemented by PGAE to mitigate equipment risk that has been deemed the cause of fires in previous years. As part of the EnergyGPS West Power and Natural Gas product offering, we been monitoring both the supply/demand components that are being impacted. On the demand side, the first set of cuts was impactful as over .8 GWa of electricity was taken from the grid with the peak hour hitting 1.1 GW. The next two hours were slightly less impactful as the temperatures were already shifting to more fall-like weather but nonetheless, families and businesses were being displaced to other adjoining balancing authorities that were not tied to PGAE or driving to ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Nov 12, 2019 | |
| Over the past three weeks we have noticed a material change in the Alberta natural gas demand. This is highly unusual. Thanks to the build out in oil sands and a growing population the province has been booming for decades. In some years we have seen as much as a 1 BCF per day gain in the underlying demand. For the first time that we can remember the demand has started to shift down. We have to look no further than the Athabasca oil sands projects to find out why. A number of companies have announced layoffs and production cuts in an effort to shore up balance sheets during a difficult price environment. On top of it, thanks to a tight natural gas inventory issue, the AECO cash prices are running at multi year highs which constricts the production margins. Natural gas is a major input for ... » read more | |
| Friday Nov 8, 2019 | |
| If my computer screen was a television, you’d think that I have been binge watching the Storage Channel! You know, that new channel that everyone is talking about that includes stand-alone battery storage, solar plus storage, pump storage hydro, and even pushing trains uphill and harnessing the energy as they fall. This is especially true in the WECC as buyers run from the worsening duck curve, coal plants retire, and rumblings of the need to put a price on installed capacity work their way around western utilities. Figure 1 | Battery Storage on the Grid In today's blog we introduce a few of the concepts and data tied to battery storage. These highlighted concepts will be broken down into more detail in an EnergyGPS Special Report that will be published in the next ... » read more | |
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