Good Morning,
Would love to report something new, something bullish, but can’t lie – the outlook remains wet and warm:
Ansergy’s Fundamental Sentiment Index at Mid-C (aggregation of 50+ week on week indicators) has turned decidedly bearish; bearishly akin to what we saw in Mid-Dec. Most of this is driven by the changing outlook; the index would be even more bearish but includes Water Supply outlook and the NWRFC lags a bit on updating it’s forecast, though we are starting to see some basins rally:
The table comes from the Sentiment Report and is sorted descending on Delta (Current – Last Week). The mighty Spokane River has rallied 7 percentage points and our friends at Avista must be mighty pleased that those 150 MWs will have that extra water in May and June.
These upgrades to the water supply outlook have just begun, I point them out today to show how volatile that water supply outlook can be, given a big storm system in mid-January. Two months from now it will be much harder to move the numbers, today just takes a good storm.
California has a bearish outlook as well:
NP finds itself nearly an inch wetter than yesterday with an even bigger bump realized at Lake Tahoe. The Mid-C is still wet just not as wet:
Renewables have soared with the arrival of the storms:
These are approaching the identical highs seen in the last storm system and will battering cash. Compounding your long woes are the falling loads with the peak for reported control areas off nearly 4 gigs from last week:
Want more? Check out the NWRFC’s Ten Day:
Contrast those changes with the big bump in Monday’s STP – oops, guess it wasn’t big enough. Bodes poorly for next week’s STP, at least from the long side. Every one (as in Slice customers and northwest IOUs) are getting longer just when they wish there were some short hedges – oh to be a spec player, at least a good one.
Has the hydro pain crested? Nah, more pain to come, me thinks, and a hint of that can be found in our STP reports:
The gray line/bar is a new addition to these popular reports and reflects the average of all STP forecasts for those periods since 2012. We added this to provide perspective as to where this year is relative to the recent past (at the request of a client, I might add). I look at those plots and see an increasingly liklihood that the NWRFC will continue to bump their streamflow forecasts over the course of this water year.
That’s it for now, need to get out the dinghy so I can row to the mailbox.
Cheers,
Mike