Good Morning,
Forget “Winter is coming”, it’s here. Seattle is clocking in the mid-30s for lows and expected to get down to perhaps the high 20s; Portland a bit cooler; even northern Cali will be chilly.
More interesting than a modest cold front is the predicted cool weather following Thanksgiving, and the dearth of precipitation. I drove over the Cascades on Friday expecting to see the “resorts” open for skiing; instead I saw just a smattering of snow, and no major precip is forecasted over the next 10 days:
Trends are trends til they aren’t; the wet of late is morphing into the dry of now; call that bullish Mid-C. El Nino, anyone? The weekly 34 index punched a 3.1 last week; contrast the current beast with the previous big one, 97-98, which registered a 2.8 for the same week. That 3.1 is off the charts as far as anomalies go – its no longer a debate whether the 15-16 El Nino is big, it will be the biggest on record, at least as far as sea surface temperature anomalies go. What it brings weather-wise remains to be seen, except we are seeing the NWRFC back down their water supply forecasts:
TDA is now at 92% of normal, off 2% from 94% a week ago. Most of the positive anomalies are in British Columbia – great for our Canadian friends but won’t help the northwest utes much (and maybe explains why Powerex is dumping 1500 aMW into Mid-C …again).
It’s STP Monday today and I’m expecting an interesting forecast, one which reflects the cooling and drying of Mid-C. I am expecting Dec to show modest drops (bullish) and perhaps Jan-Mar drops as well – with one caveat – BPA will generate into this cold event which, if not already baked into the 10 day forecast, may generate more BOM/Dec water. Let’s just see what happens this afternoon:
The NWRFC 10 day has been a good prognisticator and its tea leaves are suggesting Dec cuts, albeit a modest shearing. Speaking of shearing, renewables have fallen off of the proverbial cliff:
On that aforementioned drive across the state last week I noted the wind mills standing tall and proud …and not spinning. Doubt they will be spinning for another ten days given the current weather forecast. Call that bullish north, but call the return of all the nukes bearish:
CGS had a hiccup over the weekend but now all six are at 100% – call it bearish south. You know what would be cool? If Ansergy laid out its fundamental sentiment on all of the items in one easy to read table …something like this:
Wow, that says “very bullish” for the northwest. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see which drivers are driving that sentiment:
So Mid-C has 57 bullish hydro drivers and just 6 bearish ones – what are those, you ask?
There you go, ask and answered. All of the above will be added to our service this week and I’m pretty excited about that. Each of the sentiments are derived from reports in the Fundy group then aggregated by type and hub. We will be offering this report on both the website and as an email.
The recent dryness is starting to seep into the Ansergy term forecast causing blocks of energy to fall off, at least compared to a week ago:
I’d expect this trend to extend given no substantive precip in the 10 day forecast ..and with BPA expected to draft into this week’s cold. BC Hydro is already drafting into the cold event and are now back to their exporting ways:
Call that bearish on the surface but this surge of exports is endemic of a more bullish Mid-C outlook, at least from the Canadian’s perspective, or perhaps they just received a lot of rain over the last few weeks and their run of river is running hard.
The DC line is showing signs of life, maybe …
Call it test power, call it what you like, but don’t call it completely down …maybe BPA is getting ready to bring it back early?
That’s all for now, enjoy your day and may the trading gods smile upon you.
Mike