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| Wednesday Mar 11, 2026 | |
| In the Northern Hemisphere, the start of spring is less than two weeks away. Milder temperatures are expected to give electricity grids a break and natural gas plants an opportunity to perform much needed maintenance. In Calgary, spring seems far away as overnight lows are still dipping in the teens while other Alberta cities are still expecting temperatures below 0 degrees F. Despite the cold, natural gas outages have gotten a head start on spring outage levels. Over the past few days, thermal outages have been close to or above 4 GW, a level often not seen until April or May in Alberta. Figure 1 | AESO Natural Gas Outages The lack of available natural gas plants put the AESO grid in a tight spot on Monday night. The figure below is displayed in Energy GPS’s AESO Supply Demand ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 10, 2026 | |
| ERCOT fundamentals have remained relatively balanced through the first quarter of the year, with moderate demand growth, strong renewable supply, and rapidly expanding battery storage helping keep the market in a comfortable place. Recently, we released an ERCOT flash examining how these factors are evolving compared with prior years and what they could mean as the market moves into Q2. Figure 1 | Daily Demand vs Temp, Q1 of 2024 – 2026 On the demand side, load growth has slowed compared to the increase seen from 2024 to 2025, though underlying demand still appears solid. Much of the softer year-over-year growth can be attributed to weather. This winter featured only one meaningful cold event during January and February, while the same period last year saw several. When adjusting ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 9, 2026 | |
| The focal point over the past eight days has been what is transpiring over in the Persian Gulf between Israel/US and Iran. The combative actions by all parties have brought over 20% of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) supply to a halt via the Strait of Hormuz being closed to tankers. The passageway has always been talked about a major thoroughfare that was recently discussed when the US took the initiative in 2025 to take out key nuclear sites within Iran. Figure 1 | Strait of Hormuz The world is on edge given that the downstream impact on oil and LNG volume impacts the market fundamentals and there is not a view on how long the actions between the parties will last as there does not seem to be an end in sight. From a commodity perspective, global oil prices have ... » read more | |
| Friday Mar 6, 2026 | |
| SPP is having a high wind episode from March 5 to March 7 which is unfolding alongside a weather event across the central U.S. characterized by record winter warmth and an approaching storm system. Oklahoma recently closed out its warmest meteorological winter on record, with February temperatures running well above long term averages. The statewide average temperature for February reached 51.1°F, breaking the previous record 50.6°F set in 1954. This extended warmth across the SPP footprint has suppressed typical winter heating demand, contributing to softer system load conditions across much of the region. Figure 1 | Forecast Severe Thunderstorm Risk Across the Central U.S., Including the SPP Region Looking ... » read more | |
| Thursday Mar 5, 2026 | |
| The Northwest is walking a bit of a tightrope of late as the persistently mild temperatures have returned to the region after a brief cold, keeping load firmly in check. At the same time, the supply side of the balancing equation is facing some tough math with hydro generation still strong after averaging 5 GW higher in February than the year prior (and sitting 3.1 GW over 2025 for March month-to-date). Add to that the surging wind generation that has shown up in the region and the Northwest grid has been hard-pressed to find a home for all of its supply. Knocking off the region’s gas plants has not fully resolved things either, even with gas nominations for NWP and GTN in Oregon and Washington sitting 200 MMCF behind last year. So we saw Mid-C bilateral pricing drop down into the ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Mar 4, 2026 | |
| The official start of spring is just a couple of weeks away now. Here in the Pacific Northwest the signs are already starting to appear. Daffodils are blooming and increasingly frequent sunny days are bringing cheer. The extra sun comes with price, marking another sign of the season: Daylight Saving Time. This weekend people across the country will be changing their clocks, springing forward, and losing an hour of sleep. The clocks aren’t the only ones springing forward into the new season; US nuclear plants have also gotten a jump start on the spring season. The spring months, when power demand tends to be lower, provide an important opportunity for power plants to schedule regular maintenance. US nuclear plants take this time to refuel, a process that can take the plant 100% ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Mar 3, 2026 | |
| Over the past week, the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) has experienced repeated real-time (RT) price spikes (as discussed in our recent SPP market flash), even though overall grid fundamentals have remained relatively comfortable. System demand has largely hovered in the mid-30 GW range, supported by mild weather, while wind output has been variable but far from being muted. Net load levels, though fluctuating, have not suggested a broadly tight system. Figure 1 | SPP Daily Profile Yet RT prices have told a very different story. Several sessions posted triple-digit spikes at both North and South hubs, while day-ahead (DA) prices stayed comparatively muted. In many cases, the spike hours did not coincide with the highest net load periods of the week. That disconnect indicates the volatility ... » read more | |
| Monday Mar 2, 2026 | |
| With the tension rising in the Persian Gulf, oil futures will be the focal point as we move through the first week of March 2026. Natural gas future prices will be torn between market fundamentals in the cash market pointed towards bearishness while the unrest alluded to in the opening sentence tends to be tied to support as the unknown has no top. Figure 1 | California Natural Gas Demand Profiles – Year on Year Comparison Out West, the natural gas landscape continues to feel the weight of too many molecules in storage and now that winter is basically behind us, the next few weeks will start to get more interesting. Last week saw both Citygate trading hubs push lower with the two-day (1st/2nd) period tapping $1.31 for PGAE Citygate, $1.67 down at SoCal Citygate while SoCal Border ... » read more | |
| Friday Feb 27, 2026 | |
| We’ve been writing about the Winter Storm Hernando this week. While there was a vast amount of snow, the temperatures were not especially cold, and as a result, it didn’t stress the supply of electricity generation. Hernando has been described by my technical analyst—a role filled by my mother—as a once-in-a-generation storm. Figure 1 | Once-In-A-Generation Storm Photo Credit: Peg Belden She notes that this is the third major blizzard she has encountered in her lifetime. Her credentials? She has spent most of her 88 years in upstate New York and New England. First, there was the “Blizzard of 1966” which was a nor’easter that impacted a broad swath of the eastern United States and Canada. My parents were at a friend’s house for dinner when ... » read more | |
| Thursday Feb 26, 2026 | |
| This week has brought some excitement to the Northeast with the arrival of Winter Storm Hernando, a bomb cyclone Nor’easter that brought cold temperatures, high winds, and massive snowfall to New York and New England. With over 3 feet of snow falling on Providence, RI and 2+ feet was the norm all along the coast. The past three days has been an interesting illustration of how the volatility in renewable output can play into an ISO’s balancing act both within and across days. We can take ISONE, where we have the ISO’s hourly profiles plotted for load, wind, and solar generation, along with a net thermal calculation that subtracts wind, solar, and nuclear generation from system load. The second pane of the figure shows the large influx of wind that showed up in New England ... » read more | |