Month: December 2016

Good Morning,

Today’s Subject was easy to pick, it’s colder today than yesterday and colder than Wednesday:

 

The cold is seeping into California in the latest forecasts and is also moving west, highly unusual and is setup by the high-pressure system in the Gulf of Alaska and the low in the south:

The Northwest doesn’t see this kind of event very often, usually that blocking high just pushes the cold to where it belongs, Chicago, but the counter-clockwise low in Texas is shoving the cold to the west – cool stuff, huh?

 

 

Energy is relative, so just to keep this even in perspective, we pulled out the Dec 10, 6-10 day; that was the season’s coldest so far. In the current 6-10, the event extrudes further west and south, but the east is warmer, bearish for gas (Nymex).

Spot gas remains robust:

Especially at PG&E as that premium hub flirts with the four handle … who’d a thunk? This current weather should tighten basis as the east is just not that cold.

Natty opened weakly, but was rallying:

All in all, setting up for a good 2017 …if you’re long. We still think there are some short ops out there but given the market’s tendency to bid everything up, then pound everything down, short with caution…and you better do it with heat rates, or at least with a chunk of the gas hedged.

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Demand

Let’s start with loads, mainly to get them out of the way.

2017 is going to be the “Year of the Dashboards”; we love these as they make blogging a lot easier – and they should make using Ansergy easier too. For the record, all the dashboards I use are on your accounts under “Ansergy Dashboards” – same with Bookmarks. Garett will be reaching out to everyone to offer up a quick online tutorial on how to use these.

So what’s in loads worth talking about? Nothing. They are sideways and off from the Dec 10 highs, but that too shall pass….

We typically turn off Min/Max as it distorts the plot’s Y axis but not today – all have the Min activated (gray line) and the axis mostly didn’t change. Call that bullish.  Two or more points here:

1. Temperatures are colder than yesterday or Wednesday
2. the Cold lasts longer and now is trickling into the weekend
3. Climo is starting to rally; not that we can’t get colder in Feb (anyone old enough to remember Feb 89?)

Even the Golden State shall flirt with ten-year lows, plus it has hints of Week Two cold, but the big news will be next week and whatever fat the system has today will get partially burned up next week rendering BOM and Feb that much more bullish.

For lack of a better term, we are calling the rest of the US WECC the “Interior.” It’s cold but relatively less cold than the Northwest, but nowhere in the WECC (Canada included) will be bearish (well, maybe San Diego) and that is what you want to get the ISO jumping.

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Hydro

The rain on the cold parade, as usual, is the northwest’s pesky 33,000 MW of hydro capacity. That venerable system is poised to crush any irrationally exuberant prices but after several weeks of crushing it may be growing constrained.  BPA is drafting its treaty water and filling Coulee in anticipation of new system highs (demand) everywhere. All should be good unless this cold lingers into week two, then ugly might become the operative word. We wouldn’t risk our 2016 bonus by being short anywhere closer than April.

Flows at Birchbank are basically off the charts, now more than a 100kcfs, but the province has the bullets, its reservoirs are still robust. BPA is using that water to fill Coulee:

Up two feet and should add another foot over the weekend, it will need it with the cold.

BPA is also drafting at Libby which is contributing about 20k to GCL’s inflows. But all is not so rosy in the land of hydro; natural river flows are barely flowing:

Most of the indexes are at five-year lows and after next week they probably all will be at those lows. Basically, BPA is burning up its storage to meet demand. It has the bullets, so it is doing the right thing, but what happens when the next cold front hits, and the one after? Not much, what we are seeing is just a very early flood control draft which means less water in Feb and March, perhaps April, but we doubt that. We think most of this water going through the turbines today and next week would have been Feb-Mar water.

That leads us to our next topic – Water Supply. The first two weeks of Jan are perhaps the most exciting times in a water year as the Corps of Engineers release their initial flood control requirements. Let’s look at that water supply:

The RFC has progressively walked its forecast down to reality, congrats! Now both Ansergy and the RFC are in agreement; WY17 is just slightly below normal, but with next to zero precip in the ten day, and more drafting, we are pretty sure this number is going to drop; our guess is we see a 95% of normal used in that Jan FC release.

You can call the above The Dalles, if you prefer, we call our lower Columbia station “Lower Columbia,” but it’s the same. What isn’t the same is the massive hair cut the RFC has given to its Jan-July TDA outlook. This chart is more volatile than the Natty graph, LOL. We doubt that a 5% drop came from melting snow – too cold for that; and find it hard to believe that a dry 10-day outlook could pull down an 180-day forecast that much. The conspiracist in us would say that BPA doesn’t want to be forced into a draft and wants a low number – but hey, they wouldn’t do that, would they?

Some of that TDA haircut is coming out of the Snake system; the RFC has pounded IHR down 7% in just three days. No explanation, it just is what it is.

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TransGen

No gen updates, the ISO has no new outages and no new returns. Al the nukes are running, and by Tuesday all the gas units will be running, too.

The AC and DC are flowing similar to what they’ve been doing all week so no point in showing the plots; we do think that we’ll see massive pull-backs in exports to California beginning on Monday, maybe even on Sunday.

Powerex pounded the Mid-C yesterday, approaching their highs (for exports). Makes sense, BPA is pulling all that water, it is going through Arrow’s penstocks, why not send the electrons to the Yanks, too?

Flows out of ZP are all going north though last time it got cold we saw these flows collapse, we’ll be watching next week to see if the same happens.

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Conclusions

• Mid-C
  • 
    • Jan/Bom – it would be suicide to short this, we think, and we’ll stay long
    • Feb – it gapped up, mostly off of gas, but all of this water being burned in Jan was previously destined for Feb-Mar, now its gone. Plus the weather trend is cold, and until that breaks, we fear Feb … LONG
    • Mar – As the RFC walks down its water supply it also reduces the chances of seeing any drum gate work on Coulee. Whenever we see March water consumed in Jan, we have to like March, despite the rally … LONG
    • Q2 – this one gets tricky, WY17 is not a dry year by any stretch, we think its wetter than the RFC thinks it is, and all of that snow will melt, that we can guarantee; just a question of when? Well, we can also guarantee it will start melting in Q2, and most likely be done melting in Q2, and at some point, Q2 will trade in single digits, and everyone will hate it and look back at the Dec 30 Q2 chart and say “Why didn’t I short it on that day?”  There, that is the short case; the long case is that the trend can be your friend and the market is dumb (some of the time), and if things get really ugly next week Q2 is going to be bid up.  That said, we already have the big length on in the Q1…….SHORT
    • 
      • The market has jacked the Q2’s heat rate 700 btu in the last couple of days (Q2 relative to Q1); we think that is crazy, this Jan water being burned was Feb-Mar water, not Apr-June.
• Other Hubs – nada, just care about the MidC atm.

 

 

Good Afternoon,

Here are a few highlights of what’s going on in the west today.

Temperatures

Mid-C Temps

It’s been mentioned each of the past two days, but cold temperatures are soon to hit Mid-C, though it’s looking more and more like ‘cold’ may not be the most accurate description.  Minimum temperatures have been forecasted 5 degrees colder than forecasted yesterday for January 3rd; now sitting at a potential 10+ year low of 14 degrees for Mid-C as an aggregate.

Portland Temps

Take a closer look at the larger population centers of Mid-C, and you’ll notice a similar story.  Portland has a chance to set a 10+ year record low for several consecutive days beginning on the first.

Seattle Temps

Seattle won’t quite hit the low temps that Portland will see, but still should set new 10+ year minimum temps.

Current Temps Summary

Taking a broader look at the west we see that just one of the 17 major stations that Ansergy monitors is currently registering temperatures above average (Albuquerque).  Billings is the furthest below normal at 16.4 degrees from climo.

Water Supply

Hydro Reservoir – Current

Grand Coulee again added a couple more percentage points to its reservoir, and now sits at 87% full.  Will be something to keep an eye on next week as demand should go through the roof.

Demand

SP15 Loads

Demand in SP15 is down 1250 MW week over week, and down 955 MW year over year.  Loads have remained mostly unchanged for the past three days.

River Forecast

NW River Forecast

The 10-Day River Forecast is up from the STP forecast for each of the next ten days, though especially moving into next week.  There is little change in yesterday’s forecast compared to today.

Gas Reports

Mid-C Nodal Power Summary (by Plant)

Mid-C  decreased close to 13,500 MCF as a whole largely thanks to two Northwest stations dropping out completely (Goldendale Generating Station, and Evander).

Hub-Level Gas Demand

Demand decreased in all hubs except SP15 (3.3%) and Great Basin (3.7%).  NP15 showed the largest nominal drop at 158 MMCF (4.9%).

Nat Gas Summary

SoCal Citygate dropped $0.06, while the other hubs remained mostly unchanged give or take a penny.

Outages

Major Unit Outages

350 MW returned to SP15 today, including 85 MW of gas.  NP15 also had some plants come back online — 244 MW of hydro, and 57 MW of geo.

 Renewables

Mid-C Renewable Generation

Mid-C wind hit 4000 MW multiple times on the 27th, and will have the opportunity to do the same today as well.  The forecast also suggests relatively calm winds as the cold front settles onto the Northwest.

Transmission

Transmission Mid-C to NP

TTC dropped 50 MW mid-day yesterday, and flow is down nearly 200 MW in daily average.  This drop comes after four consecutive days of increases.

Transmission – MidC to BC

Flow south increased nearly 300 MW day-over-day.  BC did show some imports briefly on the 27th when it reached a peak of 375 MW at 3:00 PM.

 

Have a great rest of your week,

William

Good Morning,

Cold is coming; the Northwest is set to realize the most frigid temperatures of the year.

What sets this event off from the Dec 10 is the westward (and southward)  extension of the cold, a true nor’easterly.

Mid-C Composite Temperatures

All hubs, aside from Palo, realize negative ten-day anomalies.

The previous lows for the composite Mid-C were low 20s, today’s forecast hits a low of 17 and falls across most of next week, the lowest of the low on the 2nd, a federal holiday, but Tues-Thurs are not that much warmer. Also worthy of our attention is the string of no precip days; nearly ten ..bone dry, nada.

Seattle (Sea-Tac) sees lows around 25 though Weather Channel puts the lows in the teens. Also, dry as in nothing.

Sacramento sees the same but also has hints of another cold snap the following week, though it is short-lived.

Phoenix flirts with below normal, also note that average ticks up twice in the plot … tis the season for higher lows as we begin the grind into summer.

Burbank gets a touch chilly and that second week of Jan shows colder weather than next week.

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Hydro

Today’s forecast is bullish for the long-term hydro outlook both because it is dry and cold; that cold will force BPA into deeper drafts, the dry keeps the snowpack anomalies low.

Flows out of Arrow soared yesterday, up 24kcfs from last week, all heading towards Coulee and the other 15,000 MWs of generating capacity.

Flows on the Mid-C are up at BON and the border, but down everywhere else.

Mid-C storage is now lower than any of the last four years, need to go all the way back to 2012 to find a lower year.

California is below normal, snow-wise, while the other WECC hubs are above, even the Mid-C broke 100 yesterday as it gapped 5% in a day!

Nearly every basin saw big jumps, look at the Cowlitz – up 18% in a day, or the Spokane – up 9%, and big money basins, Flathead, Clark Fork, and Kootenai all sported 5% rallies. But, bear in mind that everything goes dry for the next ten days so what giveth get taketh and going into the first Flood Control directive we probably will end up just below normal – we’ll go out on a limb and suggest TDA is tagged with a 97% on that day.

The RFC continues to jack its forecasts, even after jacking its STP yesterday; next week will see five-month highs in Mid-C hydro energy. The hub will need the energy.

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TransGen

No ISO units returned, but a few tripped:

Two Paloma units are off-line, the rest is hydro that doesn’t have the water to run anyways.

SP saw an uptick in gas noms for its generators but still massively lags past years; the Northwest sees a lot of idle capacity too:

Both Grays and Goldendale are spinning, waiting for some higher prices, that is coming, by Monday we’d expect all of these to be online.

BC Hydro quit selling, they took their ball and went home; not sure they’ll be back, either, given how cold the province is going to get. But the Mid-C shrugged off the selfish Canadians and jammed a boat-load of power into Kalistan.

Both the AC and DC are well above the weekly averages and have been steadily increasing the loading of the lines; that too shall pass on Monday as the hub shrugs off the ISO and keeps its energy at home.

ZP is back to exporting into NP, turns out those flows into SP were a short-lived phenom; be interesting to see what happens on Tuesday.

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Conclusions

Simple conclusion – it’s cold. As for the buy/sell question, not so simple.

January Trade Rank Dashboard

Every hub, both on and off, have rallied and the Mid-C has rallied the most. We were long, we like rallies, but has it rallied too much? Is it time to sell the fact, we already bought the rumor. We’re tempted, after all we want to lock in our 2016 bonus and we just made it bigger, but we’ll be a pig and …

• Mid-C – stay long, get longer
• SP15 – sell our length, go flat
• Palo – short it off the recent rally

February Dashboard

By the way, these dashboards are now on your account, open up the left-side item called “Ansergy Dashboards” – same with bookmarks; you now have exactly what I use.

Feb has rallied too, not sure why we haven’t seen any temperature forecasts out that far. Sympathy rallies (off of Jan week one) are fade opportunities

• Mid-C – short
• SP15 – short
• Palo – short

Good Afternoon,

Today is STP Monday, despite being Tuesday, because yesterday was Christmas Monday, at least for the feds, and probably most everyone else. Might have been a good day to check in, however, given that the coldest event of the season blew in as a belated Xmas present for the longs.

Today’s STP is bearish, hydro-wise, which makes sense given that BPA is going to draft the bejeezus out of its reservoirs just to keep the Northwest Christmas lights lit.

Monthly Energy

Energy Scorecard

• Dec – Up 1900 aMW – a mind-boggling show-stopper for what’s left of BOM
• Jan – Up 800 aMW – less boggling, but still large, and suggests how low these reservoirs are getting pulled
• Feb – Up 250 aMW
• Mar – Down 200 aMW; have to pay the piper somewhere, though this meager amount barely registers as a downpayment
• Apr – Down 100 aMW …yawwwn, that number will change 20 times between now and then

Daily Energy

Wow, rains on the cold parade, but just goes to show why BPA fills its reservoirs in the Fall.  Also note most of the goofy Feb – into – Mar haircut was grafted back onto the chart; then a bizarre cut from Mar 21 to Apr 1 – first hint that this year will get Drum Gate?

Year on Year

Jan is shaping up to be a flush month, it is now the biggest of the last four, and it is probably correct. Look at Feb versus last year, try on four nukes worth of new-found hydro energy and see if you like it. April is shaping up to be a big month, too; a lot more water in there than the current market thinks, we think.

Day of Year

Not much different in this view, though those Mar 21 haircuts look highly suspect, given the size of this water year; these are now four-year lows for those ten days.

Happy New Year,

Team Ansergy

Good Afternoon,

A new cold front looms on the northwest while reservoirs get a brief hiatus from withdrawals. and the snow pack builds.  Here are a few other highlights of what’s going on in the west today.

Water Supply

Hydro Reservoir – Current

Grand Coulee has been able to replenish at least some of its reservoir for the first time in two weeks.  The low on Dec 25th (85%) was the same level seen on Sept 19th.  With more frigid temperatures on their way this weekend, expect reserves to drop even further.

Snow Summary – by Hub

Another snowstorm moved through the northwest last night and this morning, so we should expect these hub-level snow reports to increase further.  Mid-C is sitting at 97% of normal, but could jump above 100% as the snow sites trickle in with new data.

Great Basin is already showing signs of significant snow year with 129% of normal snow levels.

Demand

Mid-C Loads

Demand has tapered off from the last cold front to hit Mid-C, and now finds itself literally in the middle of the calm before the storm as frigid temps loom on the West Coast.  Demand is now below last year for the first time in weeks, and is more than 2200 MW below last week’s loads.

Temperatures

Mid-C Temps

Cool temperatures have been revised to frigid for next week, even at a hub level.  Mid-C composite temps could drop as low as 18 for Jan-4th, and will be below normal for at least the first week of the new year.  These temps are six degrees cooler than what was forecasted yesterday.

NP-15 Temps

While not nearly as cold as Mid-C, NP will still get temps much cooler than normal.  We could see composite temps hug the freezing level on the 5th as the forecast currently calls for 33 degrees.

Hub-Level Temps

Palo Verde and Rockies are the only hubs currently sitting above normal.

Weather Actuals – Degree Day Summary

As December comes to an end we can clearly see the affect that the past couple cold fronts have had on the Northwest.  Every major Mid-C population center is showing average degree days at more than 10% above normal.

 Outages

ISO Major Unit Outages Chart

Outages have remained largely unchanged for the last week.  Wind had 170 MW return on the 23rd, and gas has hovered around 1400 MW of outage since the 22nd.

Natural Gas

Natural Gas Nodes – Demand Daily

Mid-C gas demand has settled between 1650 and 1700 MMCF after peaking at 2090 MMCF on the 18th.  With forecasts predicting temps even colder than last week, we should see gas demand peak above 2000 MMCF again.

Renewables

 

Mid-C Renewable Generation

Mid-C wind has been in a bit of a lull since Saturday, but has potential to reach significant generation over the next week.  Dec 20th marked a week-long high of more than 4000 MW.  We could see similar generation tomorrow as well.

Transmission

Transmission Mid-C to NP

After fairly erratic week, it looks like TTC has settled, for the most part, at 3750 MW.  Flow has been slowly ramping up since the 23rd, and reached a week high of 3110 MW yesterday.

Transmission – MidC to BC

Daily averages stepped up through most of last week before again coming off yesterday, though flow flirted with 0 on Sunday and again yesterday.  We’ll keep an eye on whether BC again imports during the coming cold front.

Have a great week,

William

Good Morning,

As the year winds down, we are winding up for next year. Lot’s of exciting developments will take place over the next couple of weeks starting with the first Flood Control guidelines. More on that later, let’s see how loads fared over the holiday weekend:

Consistency can be a virtue, in the case of loads, it was a virtue if you were short. Across the WECC loads plummetted off of rallying temperatures; nearly every station has a higher low:

Lake Tahoe realized a slightly colder low, week on week, while the east-side Mid-C stations saw 15-20 degree rallies. Interesting that Portland was sideways, no change and still a chilly 28 for a low. We would have been jumping up and down a month ago to post a 28; now it barely warrants notice. Perhaps because the market is still flush with energy and prices are uneventful:

The Day Ahead market is off from a week ago, but then so is gas:

The Rockies are off $.40/mmbtu while PG&E is unchanged and the Mid-C is (Stanfield) is in the middle; off $.0.19. With loads dropping it is no surprise the Day Ahead is off.

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Demand Forecasts

Hub Summary

The Rockies are the only hub to see warmer temperatures, week on week, everywhere else is a shade cooler and half the hubs are above normal.

Mid-C Minimum Composite

The most recent outlook has hints of new cold over the next weekend, nothing crazy cold, just colder than normal. Also, note the big water heading towards the MidC – this is a new system that is just showing up and nearly every day gets splashed. Check out those New Year’s Day storms falling on the coldest days – epic skiing in the northwest. Me, I’ll be watching the Huskies stomp Bama.

Portland, OR

Portland dips back below freezing beginning on New Year’s Eve, which is also when it will begin snowing in the City of Roses; by the time you need to head back to work on Monday, it will be a raging blizzard, if you believe the above forecast. But our concern is your daily commute, and how awful it will be in Portland next Monday, it is on WY17. All of this precip heading towards the northwest is teeing up the hub for some big snow rallies on bumps in its water supply outlook, all falling right before the first Flood Control. Plot thickens.

Sacramento, CA

Cool in the front and warmer throughout the forecast; and another big storm scheduled to rain on NoCal’s New Year’s parade. C’est la vie.

Burbank, CA

Some cooler weather next week and hints of extended cool out two weeks, don’t bank on it, too far out for most mortal weathermen/women.

Phoenix, AZ

The desert gets some very nice weather (red circles) and also has those Burbank cold hints on the back; not a lot to say about PV’s weather, it’s mild and going nowhere.

In closing the demand section, let’s take a look at month-to-date degree days (realized):

Bullish in the north, bearish in the south. Dec should close out one of the better ones, degree day-wise, at the Mid-C.

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Hydro

We mentioned it is getting wetter at Mid-C and NP15:

The Rockies, however, are mired in a drought and your ski trip there should be canceled, re-book for somewhere less glamorous but snowier, like Schweitzer or Big Mountain.

Station Precip

Wow, three inches plus at Portland and Seattle, and some of that may come down as snow in both. Spokane is poised to get an inch, and it already has nearly a foot of snow on the ground. All of this new water is going to come down as snow and water supply is going up:

We’re not publishing the RFC by itself anymore, because we don’t think it’s a good prediction of where water supply is at, usually. Lately, there has been a convergence towards our numbers, and it seems there is a consensus that TDA is very close to normal, 98% per the RFC, 100% per us.  The lines flip at Coulee, we are slightly below the RFC, but both are about the same as TDA; and the Snake are identical. What isn’t identical are the standard deviations for the two forecasts – the RFC’s SD is off the charts, ours barely registers.

Flood Control guidelines will be released in two weeks, and it looks like they will be based upon normal which would suggest drafts to the 1235-1245 at Coulee, though we still don’t know if the Bureau is going to perform maintenance on the dam’s drum gates.  January should be safe from drafts, but Feb-April warrants caution. Coulee is under 1280 today so much of the pain has been drafted to meet last week’s loads, and with the more cool weather over the next week, even more pain will be avoided.

Perhaps the biggest Mid-C hydro news is the drafts to meet loads, in both BC and the Northwest:

Mid-C is now beneath its five-year average, in fact, is lower than any of the last five years. Call that bullish for Q1, maybe bullish for Q2 but with normal to possibly above normal snow it may be moot for the latter. All of this drafting has put a lot of water in the system, and with the persistent cold there hasn’t been a chance for BPA to let up on its drafts – the rivers are flush with water:

Flows on the mainstem remain above the five-year averages though they have backed off from last week (see Demand above). We see signs of a general tightening in water – take the Clark Fork as an example. Avista is passing just 16k CFS; we’re sure they’d love more water but its just not there. Probably from a cold month and the rivers are icing up, and nothing is melting – that trend shall continue for another week, at least. Makes Jan looks juicy.

Our SideFlow indexes reflect the same:

The Mid-Col index is almost bone dry; nothing is coming out of the Cascades; all of the indexes are off from a week ago, and all are well below the five-year average.

BC’s rivers are a similar story – regulated drafts are filling the rivers while the smaller, run-of-river, are drying (freezing) up.

Most of the California rivers are also backing down, but look at what they did to Shasta yesterday – cranked it up to almost 10kcfs, nearly double from a week ago. No clue what went on there yesterday, but that is a lot of water and put the project at close to hydraulic capacity.

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Transmission & Generation

The ISO outages are about the same:

Outages are off 2000 MW from last week and unchanged from last Friday.

The Etiwanda unit is the only new outage worthy of note.

And nothing returned that mattered. Transmission is a bit more impressive:

Flows out of ZP reversed direction yesterday and went south, not north. No idea why, it just did.

The Canadians backed off their exports over the weekend by sending about 400 aMW less to the Mid-C (versus the weekly average).

And the AC exported more, so did the DC:

All in all, net, there was about 800 aMW less energy in the Northwest due to these changes in exports.

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Conclusions

• January
  • 
    • We don’t see any compelling buys or sells, but we like the cool weather in the Northwest, we like the big drafts that have taken place on the reservoir, and we like the declining natural river flows
      • Mid-C long (HL or LL)
      • SP15 – we are long here, too
• Feb
  • 
  • We like owning the Feb, too,  for all the same reasons we like Jan; as long as cash stays tight, and why wouldn’t it? Feb may be immune from Flood Control impacts, most of the draft will be upstream at LIB and HGH; the Coulee draft won’t happen til later in Feb giving us 30 days to find a day to puke out the length.  LONG
  • SP – long too, outages are so low they can only go up, plus we like the cold weather (hints) in week two
• Q2
  • 
  • It’s trading at a 90 day high (price-wise), and we see snow cumulate, maybe it is time to take a stand and short this one? We all know how nasty April can get as BPA drafts, sometimes drafts into the melt. …SHORT (and long the spread).

Good Morning,

This will be our last post until next week, and we wish all of you a very happy, and safe, holiday and extend our thanks to all for supporting our business. We are excited about next year, 2017, and look forward to working with all of you. With that out of the way, let’s see what Mr. Market cooked up over the last couple of days.

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Demand

Big haircut at the Mid-C, no surprise given last week was cold and this week isn’t, and flat everywhere else. What’s coming?

Mid-C Composite

Two bullish mini-developments, that we see, from today’s weather. First, another “cold snap” arriving on Christmas Eve – those lows are similar, at least on the west-side, as the big event over last weekend. Plus the forecast has made a radical change from Monday’s suggesting something new happened. BOM is over, mostly, but the more cold weather will drive up demand. More on the precip below, as the reality is not quite how it looks in the above plot.

Sacramento, CA

Warmer than Monday’s outlook, still modestly cold for the rest of the month. Nothing in that chart to suggest an impending collapse and often what isn’t is more relevant than what is.

Burbank, CA

What isn’t here is anything of interest; weather in LA is above normal and slightly warmer than going out Monday. Not a lot to bring joy to the ISO gencos.

Phoenix, AZ

You won’t often see us tag Phoenix with a precip chart, but we did today off of the nearly two inches of rain heading towards the desert. Hope you bought tee time insurance.

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Hydro

Where did those PHX  two inches come from?  The station was forecasted to get zero yesterday, two today? Highly suspect, rarely do we see such a radical change. NP is poised to get wet again, just as its rivers are starting to back off, while the Mid-C goes dryer.

Dryer, but not dry. Kalispell is set to receive 0.71″, almost twice normal. Let’s just call the remainder of the month normal and then we can call the kick off of FY17 normal, which suggests the Flood Control values used by the Corps will be normal. If they (the Corps) want to work on drum gates this year, the snow levels will support that decision. Still too early to say they will, but you can’t rule it out. More on next week as we get closer.

We mentioned the Cal rivers are backing off, the Pit is down nearly 25%, but with above normal rain in the outlook they will be recharged and rally up for the last week of Dec.

We almost titled this post “Hangover” because that is what the Mid-C is feeling right now. Hung over from all the water drafted to meet those weekend loads (and last week’s cold). Note the week-on-week anomalies for the major dams – all hugely up. This should come as no surprise; it takes days to work that water out of the system and with potential Xmas cold we can expect more drafting.

Reservoirs (KAF)

Collectively, BC and Mid-C are almost 2.5 MAF lower than a month ago – those epic rains have officially been worked out of the system. We doubt the NWRFC will any longer incorporate a bal-water year bias for what happened in October – not when that rain is now floating past New Zealand.

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Generation

ISO Outages

Total outages are off nearly 5000 MW in the ISO from two weeks ago; that is bearish but more normal than not.

Just two units tripped, both gas, while a few came back…

But more new MW are offline today than Monday, call it modestly bullish, though doubt it has any impact on the market.

Gas Noms (hub totals) have cratered, look at SP, which may explain why spot gas had a significant bowel movement yesterday:

That drop in gas price looks more like what you’d see in power; crazy volatile, huh? Mid-C gas noms are backing down:

No surprise, the cold is over, but we expect the gencos/utes to fire those back up over the weekend if that cold holds.

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Transmission

Inside trans flows lie some salient clues about why Mid-C bom rallied yesterday.

 

Both the AC and DC, collectively, exported 2000 aMW more energy yesterday than the weekly average. Compare that 2000 aMW with the 1300 peak demand haircut, and you find the hub net shorter, before accounting for that hydro hangover.

Some of that net short is off-set by the extra 200 aMW BC exported into the Mid-C.

Flows out of ZP26 remain below the weekly average but above the odd levels from a few days ago.

In closing our fundamental review we’d like to look at the Ansergy gas demand indexes:

One would expect the indexes to be falling off a cliff given the spot gas collapse, but we don’t see that. If anything, West gas demand is above the three-year average so we wouldn’t be surprised to see basis tighten across the West as its near-term outlook is not that bearish.

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Conclusions

• BOM
  • MidC
    • 
    • Mr. Market panicked and over-sold the bom MidC, then quickly corrected his mistake and brought value back to parity. We were out of this, but now we are going to buy it off of that new-found cold weather and the mere fact we’d rather be long, then short, given the hub’s position in the stack.
      • 
      • We like seeing the forecast sitting at a positive inflection point and think the downside is limited. All we need is for a Coldstrip unit to trip over the weekend and we’re off to the races. …………LONG
  • SP
    • 
    • We’ll love what you hate, and you’ve hated SP so much its now dirt cheap, we think. The stack suggests it might be reasonably safe to own, too
      • 
      • Forget those left-side inflections, just won’t happen because of the transmission. If SP teeters, Mid-C quits exporting; if Mid-C gets tight it will back off exports, we already saw a 1000 MW cuts last week, might see something similar over the weekend … LONG
• Q1
  • NP-MC: Not a lot of conviction (too many regulatory variables not yet defined) so we’ll look at a spread
    • 
      • Tight deltas, the Mid-C has rallied a bit while the NP has come off all of which makes us biased bullish. We think Mid-C has more downside in Q1 than up given its opportunity to prematurely draft for drum gate, all of which will put pressure on Feb-Mar. …………. LONG
• Q2
  • SP-MC
    • 
      • Both the market and forecast have sold off, now the spread is approaching 60-day lows. The trend would suggest selling, but we hate trends and prefer owning this spread for the same reason we’d own the NP-MC q1. If there is drum gate work Mid-C Feb-Mar cash looks vulnerable, and we know what cash can do to prompt, plus we like to buy low …we are LONG

Good Morning,

You may have noticed, or not, a new set of bookmarks on the left-side panel called “Ansergy Bookmarks.” All users now have these, which are my bookmarks.

These “Ansergy” bookmarks (mine) will change from time to time, depending on what is happening in the market. I use these in creating the blogs; now you can quickly access the same reports I do.

Also, by default, all bookmarks and dashboard folders are closed. Click to open, these will stay open until you close them. Default close was necessary to avoid a left-side clutter.

We have kept your ability to make your own bookmarks; those will be stored in the appropriately named folder “Your Bookmarks.”  Recommendation: If you see a report you like in the Ansergy bookmarks save it to Your bookmarks, otherwise it may be changed or removed.

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Dashboards

You may have also noticed another object, “Dashboards” to the left as well. These are experimental, they work, but we are still working on a few new features. A dashboard is defined as one or more reports on a single screen. You can make them in a variety of styles, 2×2, 3×2, 3×3 or any other configuration your monitor can handle. You can also mix tables with charts. Some examples follow:

The above dashboard is All SP-15 Trade Rank and set in a 3×2 configuration. An alternative view might be All Prompt, or all BOM, or all Spreads.

The above is my weather dashboard and includes a mix of tables and charts. Many of the controls can be activated within the dashboards, but the filters are locked in per your saved bookmark.

In this view, I made a 2×2 off of ISO markets and used a combo of tables and charts. Also, note that the graph in the lower-right is a multi-line while the one on the left is a simple line. I personally don’t like the multi-line in these dashboards because they take up too much space, so most of our charts have the option to select “Line” – that was added for the dashboards.

Dashboards are available, but we have one important change coming:

Your vs. Ansergy Dashboards – like bookmarks, we are going to populate all of the accounts with a few that we use, just to jump start your efforts. If you would like some help making some, please contact William or Garrett, they are the dashboard pros. We can either log your account and make them directly (will require a password reset) or make them per your instructions on our account and “Clone” to yours.

Happy Holidays,

• Mike – [email protected]
• Garrett – [email protected]
• William – [email protected]

Good Afternoon,

Here are a few highlights of what’s going on in the west today.

Water Supply

Hydro Reservoir – Current

Grand Coulee has been slowly lowering the reservoir beginning on November 26th, and rapidly decreasing reserves coinciding with last week’s cold snap beginning on December 14th.

Historical Reservoir Levels

Grand Coulee reservoir currently sits at 88% capacity for Dec. 20th.  This puts the current level well behind 2015 (93%) and 2014 (94%), and on par with 2013 (88%).

Snow Summary – by Hub

As Grand Coulee draws down a little faster than most years (for December), snow is beginning to pile up.  Mid-C is sitting at 94% of normal, significantly ahead of the past two years.  94% is also a decent increase over the past several days as snow storms have blanketed the northwest.

Rockies and Great Basin are both pacing above 100% while PV has yet to show much snow at all as it sits at 14% for the 2017 snow year.

Demand

Mid-C Loads

Mid-C loads have tapered off a bit from last week, though remain above last year’s demand with a difference of 2200 MW yesterday.  Demand is also up week-over-week by nearly 1250 MW.

Temperatures

Burbank Temps

Burbank will have above-normal minimum temperatures for the rest of the month, and will peak on the 21st with 11 degrees above normal minimum temp (52 vs 41).  The cold spell expected to hit on the 24th has been cut short as of today and should now stay above normal.

Sacramento Temps

Sacramento won’t be as warm as Burbank, but it has also seeing a re-forecast bringing higher than normal minimum temps beginning on the 22nd.  The 23rd is now forecasted 9 degrees warmer than what was predicted yesterday.

Hub-Level Temps

Most hubs are trending warmer day-over-day, though Great Basin and Mid-C remain below climo temps.  Palo Verde shows the largest temperature anomaly with temps 3 degrees above normal.

NW River Forecast

The 10-Day River Forecast continues to forecast well above the STP forecast, especially for the next five days.  The 10-day forecast is more than 1000 MW higher than the STP for Dec-20th.

 Outages

ISO Major Unit Outages Chart

Outages of all types, and particularly gas, have further decreased since the 16th.  Total outages for the ISO sit at 2671 MW, down from a high of 7188 MW on the 9th of December.

Natural Gas

Natural Gas Nodes – Demand Daily

Gas Demand in Mid-C hit a month long high on the 17th at 2034 MMCF.

Renewables

SP15 Renewable Generation

Solar generation in SP15 had very high production the past several days, each of which registered above 5200 MW.  Solar is expected to dip to 4500 MW for the next two days before again reaching above 5000 MW to close out the month.

Mid-C Renewable Generation

Mid-C wind has the potential to hit a several week high today with a projected generation of over 4000 MW.  Generation reached a week high yesterday at 2782 MW.

Transmission

Transmission Mid-C to NP

Mid-C imported from NP briefly on the 16th during last week’s cold snap (hit a low of -295 MW at 2:00 PM).  Imports lasted four hours, and flow has been slowly ramping back up ever since with a week-long high of 3019 MW on the 19th.

Transmission – MidC to BC

BC imported from Mid-C twice during last week’s Artic Express.  The flow north reached a peak of 319 MW at 2:00 PM on the 17th, and was then followed by flow quickly moving south with a low of 2156 MW on the 18th.

 

Have a great rest of your week,

William

Good Afternoon,

The NWRFC updated its 120-day forecast today at 2:45 pm. Our take on that forecast follows.

Monthly Energy

Energy Scorecard

• Dec – down 250 aMW
• Jan – up 50 aMW
• Feb – up 450 aMW
• Mar – down 300 aMW
• Apr – down 300 aMW

A relatively modest change in their outlook, nothing appears egregiously bizarre.

Daily Energy

The cuts towards the end of Dec are interesting; I guess that is about when they expect the recent big drafts will have passed. The cuts at the end of Feb seem particularly strange, especially when the 5-year average has never shown a cut. A more likely scenario is a smooth transition from around Feb 20 to Mar 15 but probably won’t see that until we get closer.

Year on year

Nothing seems too crazy; the RFC is expecting Q1 to discharge a lot of water but not as much as 2014 (which was a much bigger water year than current). If anything, we’d expect more cuts, assuming average precip in the future.

Daily by Year

This plot compares the same week forecast in the past to this year’s, and we stand corrected, in each of the previous years, except for 2015, the RFC projected those sharp cuts at the end of Feb. Recall that 2015 was a drum gate year, no cuts. 2016 is increasingly looking eligible for drum gate work, as well. Also, note the levels 2016 is at versus the prior years, nearly every day is higher … does snow pack support?

Snow by Production Basin

We don’t see it; contrast WY17 with 2014, not even in the same ballpark in the major basins (top 5).