Featured Articles
| Wednesday Mar 8, 2017 | |
| With the renewable push over the years, the Lower 48 has seen quite a bit of wind and solar hit the grid. The pioneer to all of this was the State of California where they implemented a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) that paved the way for wind generation to be built both in the Pacific Northwest and in-state during the early years. Recently, the renewable of choice has come in the form of solar facilities that have recently peaked over 9 GW during the middle of the day. Looking at the midday average we are seeing over 8.1 GW hit the grid during ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 7, 2017 | |
| There were some big changes to the weekend weather models that caused us to alter our natural gas demand forecast. Starting on the Saturday model runs, a subtropical ridge built over the Desert Southwest allowing cold air from Canada to drop into the Midwest. By day 8 of the forecast it is now expected to be over the Mid Atlantic and New England. Chicago is expected to see a drop in its daytime highs from the mid 60's down to the low 30's. This change in the flow pattern took a prevailing forecast that had been trending above normal for most of the winter and pushed ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 6, 2017 | |
| Prior to this year, all the Chicago Cubs fans could do is talk about the Steve Bartman foul ball incident in 2003 that robbed them of their first National League Championship Series (NCLS) in 58 years and a chance to win the World Series that had escaped them since 1908. Back then the Cubs were the first team to play in three consecutive World Series (winning in 1907/1908 and losing to the crosstown rivals Chicago White Sox in 1906 - 4 games to 2 games). Figure 1 | The Incident - NCLS Chicago Cubs Game Over the past 13 years, we have seen the Boston Red Sox ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 3, 2017 | |
| Calpine’s web site describes a number of peaker plants within its California fleet. The following is a description of the 48 MW Wolfskill Energy Center. The Wolfskill Energy Center is a “peaker” facility located in Suisun, California. The single natural gas-fired aero-derivative combustion turbine generator at Wolfskill is used to rapidly respond to peak system electricity demands. Highly flexible, quick-responding peaker plants help integrate intermittent renewable resources into the state’s power grid While Calpine is known for its large ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 2, 2017 | |
| A couple of weeks back, we wrote about Oroville Dam and its situation of being at full capacity and Mother Nature sending more water its way in the form of rain. This was going to lead to the system operators spilling as much water as they could down the current working spillway. Unannounced to the any, Mother Nature was also busy moving the earth below the dam's hillside and area that contained the spillway. As a result of all this water and land movement, the spillway started to crack as a big sinkhole opened up about 1/2 the way down the concrete ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 1, 2017 | |
| With March Madness right around the corner (College Basketball's National Championship Tournament), I could not help but think of the final song they play where all the big highlights of the NCAA basketball tournament are shown with the singing of 'One Shining Moment' in the background. If you do not know what I am talking about it would be worth a couple of minutes to watch the youtube of the 2015 tournament (Wisconsin Badgers lost to the Duke Blue Devils). Back in 1986, composer David Barrett sat in a bar in East Lansing and wrote then entire song ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Feb 28, 2017 | |
| TransCanada Pipeline Corporation is one of the largest pipeline companies in the world. Starting as a infrastructure company in 1951, their first big asset was the construction and operation of the Canadain Mainline that runs from the gas production fields in the Alberta Foothills eastward to Quebec. It is one of the longest natural gas pipelines in the world. It has been the main source of supply for Eastern Canada for more than 50 years. But in the past ten years their market share for natural gas use across North America has shrunk with the production developments ... » read more | |
| Monday Feb 27, 2017 | |
| When I first started in the energy business, I did not know the terminology as I was a high math teacher who went into the business world as an IT support/help desk staffer. Once I worked my way up through the ranks as an analyst for the cash desk, my head was spinning as I had more questions than answers. I remember one of the questions I asked the term trader one day, "what is the different between the heavy load and light load numbers?" I thought it was a fare question at the time, but he just looked at me and started laughing with the ... » read more | |
| Friday Feb 24, 2017 | |
| Dipnet fishing at Celilo Falls in the 1950’s, just upstream of The Dalles Dam. 2,320 Miles: Length of the Mississippi1450 Miles: Length of Colorado River744 Miles: Length of the St Lawrence River1243 Miles: Length of Columbia River 593 kcfs: Average flow of Mississippi22.5 kcfs: Average flow of Colorado River590 kcfs: Average flow of St Lawrence River265 kcfs: Average flow of Columbia River Largest Dams in the United States:6,809 MW: Grand Coulee Dam (Columbia)2,620 MW: Chief Joseph Dam (Columbia)2,515 MW: Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant (Niagara)2,160 MW ... » read more | |
| Thursday Feb 23, 2017 | |
| Yesterday’s newsletter discussed the announced closure of the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona. Today we discuss a report that advocates for the closure of the Columbia Generating Station nuclear facility located near Richland, Washington. With the Navajo plant, the project owners are opting to close it down, while the Columbia Generating Station owners want to keep operating it and a group that I was not heretofore familiar with – Physicians for Social Responsibility – would like to close it down. Let’s start with a little background ... » read more | |
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