Good Afternoon,
Here are a few highlights of what’s going on in the west today.
Natural Gas Markets
All gashubs are again down day-over-day, though none significantly. Stanfield showed the largest decrease ($0.10).
Water Supply
More snow has fallen across Mid-C this week, pushing the early 2017 totals above previous years. The 2017 snow year trails only 2011 over the past six years, as of December 15th.
2016 Grand Coulee generation flow continues to pace above 2013 and 2015, though still falls short of 2014.
Demand
Mid-C Loads
Loads are already up 359 MW week-over-week with much colder temperatures on their way through the weekend. The year-over-year gap increased as well, now 2,590 MW higher than last year.
Temperatures
Spokane has the potential to set a new 10-year low on the 17th and 18th. Forecasts have been readjusted to account for a slightly higher minimum temp beginning on the 19th and 20th.
If temps in Spokane are able to reach above normal as forecasted early next week, it will represent the first min-temp above normal since December 4th. Spokane had been above normal for most of the fall until that point.
The Mid-C hub as a whole will have minimum temps far below normal for the next few days, but especially on the 17th (10 degrees below normal).
Every hub is showing temps below climo. While Mid-C leads the way with 4.4 degrees below normal, Great Basin, Rockies, and SP15 are all also more than a degree below climo.
The difference between the 10-Day River Forecast and the STP forecast looks like it will tighten significantly beginning on the 16th. Avg MW for the 10-Day Forecast remains largely unchanged from yesterday to today, but is mostly up from earlier this week.
Outages
465 MW of gas has come offline across the ISO since Dec-14th. Conversely, 104 MW of wind has returned online furing the same span of time.
Renewables
Solar generation in SP15 should hover close to 4000 MW for the next week. While there aren’t any days with potential for extreme generation, this is still a moderate increase over last weeks average of around 3500 MW.
Mid-C may be able to offset some of the pending increase in demand with wind generation, if the forecast holds true. The weekend shows potential for two 400+ MW days.
Transmission
Mid-C has been drawing on BC power for all of the past week, and hit a daily average high of 1247 MW on the 13th.
Have a great rest of your week,
William