Good Afternoon,
Here are a few highlights of what’s going on in the west today.
Natural Gas Markets
All hubs are up day-over-day. SoCal Citygate showed the largest nominal increase with $0.45, or 13%.
Demand
SP15 loads rallied yesterday to peak 76 MW higher than last week. Year-over-year load totals continue to peak at nearly the same levels having a difference of just over 300 MW.
NP15 is up 586 MW year-over-year, bucking the trend of lower demand over the previous week. Demand is up 398 MW week-over-week.
Year-over-year loads have swapped positions as Mid-C begins to cool off considerably. 2016 demand is up nearly 3000 MW over last year, and up 2756 MW over last week.
Temperatures
Burbank continues to forecast above-normal minimum temperatures, though slightly lower than what was predicted yesterday. The minimum temp on the 9th should be 12 degrees above normal.
Cold temperatures are expected to hit Spokane and the Inland Northwest a day earlier than forecasted yesterday. A decent amount of precipitation should join the cold spell to create a nice blanket of snow in the region.
The 10-Day River Forecast is up from the STP forecast for each of the next ten days. The 10-Day River Forecast is showing a very large increase over yesterday’s forecast for each of the next five days as well.
Gas Reports
Mid-C Nodal Power Summary (by Plant)
Mid-C as a whole increased over 165,000 MCF driven by increases to several plants, but especially Grays Harbor which saw a jump of 56,000 MCF. Mint Farm dropped from 21,778 to 0 MCF.
Demand increased in all hubs aside from SP15 where it dropped just 25 MMCF. Alternatively, NP15 increased 189 MMCF.
Outages
15 total outages today including 8 in NP 15 (535 MW of gas total), and 7 in SP 15 (1500 MW of gas total). Each hub also had over 130 MW of solar come offline as well.
Renewables
Solar generation could have potentially large days today and Thursday, where both could produce more than 6600 MW. Last week peaked on Saturday with 4919 MW.
As the first real coldfront of the year moves into Mid-C, it doesn’t look like it will bring much wind with it. Wind generation is expected to peak tomorrow with just over 3100 MW, down over 1300 MW from last week’s high.
Transmission
TTC has remained steady at 3900 MW after two sharp drops last week. Flow slowly ramped up to a daily average of 3423 MW and 3440 MW on the 3rd and 4th respectively. Flow peaked at 3662 on the 4th (7:00 AM).
The MC-BC daily average hit a low of -1634 MW on the 4th, but returned to last week’s average in the following two days. We saw flow move north briefly last week, again on the 3rd, and its peak at 1:00 PM on the 4th with 615 MW.
Have a great week,
William