Mike’s Take – Sep 10

Good Morning,

It is a good morning here in Seattle, the weather is about as ideal as one could script: mid 70s with just a mild breeze.  Perfect weather for those with budgets on their mind …. no need for the AC, just open your window. That sentiment is justified by looking at Puget Sound Energy’s load forecast:  001_PugetLoadFC; the effect of the “heat wave” adds about 200 MW to peak demand (yawn).  Portland is a different story as Portland General adds nearly 600 MW to its peak as does BPA as well.  The Mid-C adds about 2500 MW peak, no yawns here, but its just a 3-4 hour event that lasts two more days: 001_MidCDemand and that incremental demand is easily “washed” away by the incremental hydro energy at the Mid-C.  Seems BPA doesn’t need to do much to meet this demand: GCL & TDA; just turn a dial and load met.

The south, well that is a different story, check out SoCal Edison’s load forecast – up nearly 5,000 MW at the peak which drives the Ansergy price forecast up $8.00.   Actuals show this too – deltas up 19,000 on the peak from the end of August: 001_ActualDemand_Delta

 

 

But most of this change, is coming from the south:  001_ActualDemand_Delta_south

All of this is less interesting with near full transmission capacity; should it happen in a few weeks – when the south-bound derates take place –  that sentiment would be quite different.

Also relevant in today’s cash outlook is the dearth of wind001_Renewables

 

On a administrative note we are pleased to announce a couple of new reports that we added to the site:

1) Control Area load forecasts – our hub-level is comprised of 37 control areas; we are now publishing these.  The data can be a gold mine of useful information about how each utility is affected by changes of load.  We are also exploring expanding the scope of this report to include the utilities non-thermal resources (Hydro, Wind, Solar) and create a non-thermal Load and Resource report.

/ Fundamentals / Demand / Control Area Forecasts

2) Natural Gas Burn Forecasts – the model outputs many things one of which is the gas burned by hour by hub.  We have added three gas burn reports:

a) Gas Burn Forecast – this is our baseline forecast extending out two years and incorporates all of the known drivers at the time of the forecast – this, like the power, is updated three times a day.  Each of our forecasts is aggregated three ways:

i) Weekly – where the week ending corresponds to the EIA gas storage week ending

ii) Monthly

iii) Storage Season – total gas burn aggregated into the Injection Season (April 1 to Oct 31) and Withdrawal Season (Nov 1 to March 31).

b) Gas Burn Scenarios – The last 27 years of actual hydro flows and temperatures run against current conditions.  This report is broken into three charts:  El Nino years; La Nina years; and Normal years.

c) Gas Burn Sensitivities – Same as the power; 10 cases run against the base line and the gas burn (in BCF) is returned.