Good Morning,
Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend; Seattle had big rain storms on Saturday, cool and dry on Sunday, and just as the weekend wound to an end it became nice. Looking ahead it should be an ideal week with temperatures in the mid 70s in Seattle; mid 80s in Portland; and in the low 80s for the composite Mid-C. Our near-term Mid-C load forecast peaks out on Thursday with a 1900 MW rally versus a week ago which drives a barely perceptible increase in on peak and no change in off peak prices – Mid-C is mired in the high 20s, not enough incremental load to make a difference. Perhaps it is the cool night time temperature that contributes to this lack of price elasticity, but most likely it is simply that it is not hot enough in the northwest …. not true in Cali, though.
Burbank is forecasted to post a sizzling high of 102; San Jose in the high 90s; the Great Basin and Palo are just hot, but what else is new? Well, one thing new is our price forecast for SP is up about $3-4.00 for this week (NP too). All that said, the south BOM’s are up about $2.00 and the Mid-C is off a touch. Expect the Oct SP-Mid to move out this week, maybe up $2.00 in sympathy with cash, rendering
BC continues to export, in fact they set a three week high this weekend. Perhaps they are watching Coulee refill (three feet since Sep 1). For the record Dworshak and Hungry Horse are continuing to draft though Libby is now just passing inflows.
Wind energy wound down from last week’s highs while solar continues to shine. Our hourly forecast for Mid-C is off between 500 and 3000 aMW from last week and less so at SP-15. We have the Northern Intertie derated to 2200 beginning on Sep 14 but Powerex has rarely sold above that level so its a non-event in our opinion.
On the modeling front we have added the gas burn to our forecasts (hourly, daily, monthly). Later this week we will add a new menu item under Forecasts – > Natural Gas which will include our gen burn for the baseline forecast, sensitivities, and scenarios.
Next week we will roll out a new forecast that will be biased towards moderate to strong El Nino. The bias will begin in July while the older forecasts (April-June) will remain pure climatology. This version will be released next week.