Good Afternoon,
Here are a few highlights of what’s going on in the west today.
Natural Gas Markets
All hubs are down day-over-day with SoCal Citygate showing the largest drop ($0.12, or 3.7%). Most hubs remain within a few cents of last week’s prices despite today’s drop.
Demand
SP15 loads are up slightly (176 MW) from last week and remain very similar to last year with a year-over-year difference of just 191 MW. Light Loads are close to 1000 MW higher than they were last year, however.
Similar week-over-week results for NP-15 as demand is down just 242 MW, though annual changes are much more dramatic. Peak year-over-year loads are 964 MW higher as of yesterday.
Mid-C loads remain elevated compared to last year as demand was 3,878 MW higher yesterday compared to the same date a year ago. Week-over-week loads have dropped 1,023 MW.
Temperatures
Denver is set to reach a high of 69 tomorrow, a full 19 degrees above normal. The warm weather will have a very short shelf life however as max temps will dip back below normal (by 6 degrees) just two days later.
Minimum temps in Denver will take a slightly different path and should stay well above normal for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow is forecasted to have a minimum temp 22 degrees above normal. Minimum temps aren’t expected to reach within five degrees of normal for nearly another ten days.
Mid-C is at the tail end of a wet storm, and will get a more mild couple days as a reward. Hub aggregated minimum temps are expected to be eight degrees above normal tomorrow, and should stay above normal for close to another two weeks. Precipitation is expected to return by the beginning of next week.
We’ve already mentioned Denver as the largest temperature outlier, but taking a peak at the summary table we can see it’s worth noting that almost everyone in the west outside of Mid-C should experience higher than normal average temperatures.
Water Supply
The new Columbia River Basin Flood Risk Management numbers were released by the Corp of Engineers last night. Most notably, Grand Coulee April-End projected draft is now set at 1252 ft, down from 1256 ft from January’s forecast.
As a reminder, Ansergy compiles the flood management numbers as they are released. Historical and updated data are always available here.
The 10 Day River Forecast is projected to reach a peak on the 10th at 17,689 MW, an increase of a little more than 2000 MW from the STP forecast, as well as a jump up of over 700 MW from yesterday.
All western hubs are showing above normal snow packs with the lowest (Mid-C) still at 113% of normal. Great Basin dropped a couple percentage points week-over-week, while SP-15 shot back above 200% of normal.
Wanted to share a quick visual of how much higher the SP-15 snowpack is over previous years. The next closest year was 2011 at 135% of normal, while the lowest was 2014 at 33%.
Gas Reports
Demand decreased 172 MMCF (7%) in NP15, and 244 MMCF (15.7%) in Mid-C, the two largest movers. Demand is down in most hubs week-over-week, especially Great basin which dropped more than 30%.
Outages
The ISO recovered 143 MW of gas yesterday and around 120 MW of hydro. Gas outages still remain roughly 2500 MW higher than they were in late December.
Renewables
Mid-C wind reached a peak of 3391 MW in the early morning hours of the 6th. Forecasts suggest heavy potential of wind generation for each of the next couple days as well before calming down for most of next week.
Transmission
TTC again stayed steady at 3300 MW, while flow crept back above the weekly average of 1603 MW to a daily average of 1775 MW.
Much more movement in TTC for the MC-BC line as it moved from 2000 MW to 2400 MW yesterday marking the fourth change this week. The daily average hit a week-long high on the 6th at just 9 MW, and has since settled at 336 MW as of yesterday.
Have a great rest of your week,
William