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| Wednesday Aug 6, 2025 | |
| Heat is working itself into Southern California and the Desert Southwest this week with the former displaying peak loads in the 38-39 GW range starting on Wednesday and lasting through Friday. The uptick in demand will stretch the system in a way that has not been seen all summer as the month of July delivered moderate temperatures throughout the regions mentioned. Figure 1 | CAISO Peak Demand Breakdown – Actual and Forecast The level mentioned is significant when looking at years past as the grid’s supply stack was limited when it came to flexible resources and the natural gas landscape had its issues around SoCal Gas transport and storage (Aliso Canyon). Two of the three elements mentioned have been resolved for the time being with the power sector grabbing onto the ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Aug 5, 2025 | |
| The summer is about halfway over, and so far, it has been a relatively calm one in SPP. Temperatures have mostly remained seasonally cool, particularly prior to July. The figure below shows cumulative cooling degree days (CDDs) in SPP for the months of May, June, and July from 2017 through the current year. As shown, May and June 2025 recorded significantly lower CDDs compared to previous years. In May, the nine-year average cumulative CDDs was 136.29, while May 2025 settled at just 57.4. In June, CDDs were 55 below the average for the past nine years. However, conditions shifted in July, with a noticeable stretch of warmer temperatures. As a result, July 2025 saw a cumulative CDD figure of 485.3, slightly above the long-term average. Figure 1 | SPP-South CDDs, 2017–Present As ... » read more | |
| Monday Aug 4, 2025 | |
| California has been quite mild throughout the month of July 2025, but things are about to change as the short-term weather models have daytime highs reaching into the upper 90’s in key demand areas while inland is showing triple digits. The Desert Southwest is adding warmer temperatures as well while the Pacific Northwest is modest during the first full week of the new month. The uptick in temperatures in the Golden State is elevating the peak power demand numbers with the middle of the week displaying values ranging between 38-39 GW. Figure 1 | CAISO Peak Demand Volume – Actual and Forecast Looking at the aggregate chart on the left of Figure 1, the temperature increase is driving up the peak load by 3-4 GW compared to the end of July. The graph to the right displays ... » read more | |
| Friday Aug 1, 2025 | |
| This week the New York Time’s ran an article titled “Countries Promise Trump to Buy U.S. Gas, and Leave the Details for Later” while the Wall Street Journal says “Trump’s $750 Billion Deal for U.S. Energy Collides With Market Reality.” The European Commission has published a succinct and informative piece about the deal titled “EU-US trade deal explained - energy aspects.” One can understand why the average person might either (a) think this represents a bonanza for U.S. oil and gas business or (b) be very confused. Before rehashing some of the numbers (which don’t appear to add up), let’s first look at this through an energy trading lens. There are three things that lead to a purchase or sale of a commodity: (1) supply, (2) ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jul 31, 2025 | |
| One of the key stories this past week has been the blast of heat that originated in the Midwest and moved its way eastward to the coast, where it sat and intensified over the past three days. Yesterday, our daily blog focused on how MISO performed in the midst of the intense heat, with forced outages and real-time prices spiking to over $1,500/MWh on Monday night. As the week progressed, more of the heat made its way out of North MISO territory and over into PJM. This has been a recurring weather pattern in the Northeast throughout the spring and summer, with heat waves starting in the Midwest and moving into and across PJM shortly thereafter. We can see the movement across PJM in the load breakout by zone for the ISO (pictured in the figure below). The far ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jul 30, 2025 | |
| The Midwest has been working its way through a heat wave over the last few days. Temperatures were above normal with highs reaching over 90 degrees F in some North and Central MISO cities. The heat led to a flurry of alerts from MISO starting last week. Capacity Advisory Initiates were called due to high temperatures and high levels of forced outages, as well as hot weather alerts and conservative operations alerts. On Monday night strong winds were added to the mix while demand peaked over 120 GW leading to a Max Gen Alert. Figure 1 | Midwest Daily Average Temperatures and Difference from Normal (Jun-Jul) The figure below is featured in MISO Daily Supply Demand Dashboard. As mentioned above, demand was impressive both this week and last week, but the forecasted demand was even higher. » read more | |
| Tuesday Jul 29, 2025 | |
| Our latest special report titled “Waha in Motion” examines the spot natural gas prices at the Waha hub in West Texas, which often plummet—sometimes into negative territory—due to limited pipeline takeaway capacity. While Alberta faces similar oversupply challenges, Waha’s volatility is more extreme, especially during maintenance events. Despite signs of improved resilience in 2025 compared to 2024, Waha prices remain highly sensitive to any flow disruptions. Visual data comparisons show a notable decrease in the share of negative cash price settlements this year, highlighting some recent stability. Figure 1 | NGI Henry Hub and Waha Cash Prices A key factor in Waha’s improved performance is the Matterhorn Express pipeline, launched in October 2024. The ... » read more | |
| Monday Jul 28, 2025 | |
| Since back in April, SoCal gas has been under pressure. Long term capacity cuts in their Northern Zone, starting July 1st and going until November of 2026, promised to restrict imports and elevated the value of stored molecules. Before this announcement, their storage reserves looked healthy, but after the race was on to refill. This race is now nearing the finish line as stored molecules approach the same level as a year prior. The story is far from over though, as who knows what late summer and the upcoming winter could deliver. Figure 1 | SoCal Storage Volume by Year (mmcf) Our first figure, taken from our West Gas Daily Report, gives a year-over-year comparison of SoCal’s natural gas storage volumes. The current gas year, starting in November 2024, is pictured in blue, the ... » read more | |
| Friday Jul 25, 2025 | |
| Typically, the wording in the title of our blog is reversed, “Nothing solves high prices like high prices”, say the economists of the world. In other words, high prices incent either new supply to come into the market which ultimately helps to meet demand and bring down prices or consumers curtail demand, also helping to bring down or moderate prices. In the case of 2024’s springtime midday solar glut, all that excess supply, low prices and curtailment stoked an appetite for those unwanted midday MWhs specifically in the form of batteries which eat up all the extra MWhs in 2025. In Figure 1 below, we show the capture ratios for SP15 for the past three years. Capture ratio is the ratio of the generation-weighted price earned by a resource ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jul 24, 2025 | |
| This July has delivered the lowest Pacific Northwest hydro generation for ten years so far through this past Tuesday. Total system generation is averaging just 9.4 GW, down from nearly 12 GW one year ago and 10.6 GW in July of 2023. Daily flat average gen for the past three years is plotted in the figure below, and shows an increase from very early in the month as well as an uptick since the weekend. The summer has been marked by dry conditions (carrying on from the spring) with little precipitation but also no extreme heat events. The Northwest had just emerged from a cool period early in the week but is seeing temperature slide down once again, with Portland expected to stay below 80 degrees on Friday and Saturday, which is keeping load contained. For the ... » read more | |