Good Morning,
It’s early in the year to label a post “heat,” but appropriate.
97 in Palm Springs, 93 in Phoenix – that’s heat; heat that drove loads up for some of the BA’s:
All the Socal BA’s posted decent load rallies over last week and last year; none in the northern portion of the state saw increases; if anything NP’s loads decayed a touch. PG&E’s morning peak decayed about 500 MW:
The Southwest utes also enjoyed a rally:
If you are looking for a way to value 90 degrees in Phoenix just look at the chart above.
APS added 400 MW, week on week, to its peak. Even PNM jumped in and showed a rally. But that too shall pass …
Demand
The balance of the week remains “hot” then back to climo; party over.
Same story for Socal; warm til Friday then back to normals. Party over there, too.
The Northwest kind of cools, then new hints of more warm weather deeper in the forecast (days 10-15); a remarkable day on day change at Spokane on the 29th – 10-degree swing. Way too deep in a free weather forecast to bank on, but something made the meteorologist change his number. Perhaps someone bumped the Ouija board?
We short-changed the Northwest on the BA loads, here they are:
Nah, it looks like they short-changed themselves; northwest loads are in the crapper waiting for some to pull the handle and send them into the sewer.
Hydro
We love hydro this time of the year; most of the blog is hydro babble. Why wouldn’t it be? Anytime you can swing Net Demand 4-6000 MW in a few weeks its newsworthy, blogworthy.
The RFC is running out of bearish steam; after adding energy to its ten-day forecast for about a month straight it is finally not making any big changes. Check out the Y axis – 24kmw; that is May-June-esque. Word of caution on this plot – it is not net of spill and BPA is spilling like a drunk at 2:00 AM:
Now contrast Trump’s operations with the rest of the owners:
The only plot above that has material spill is …. drumroll … BPA’s Dworshak plant. Grant, Chelan and the rest of the PUDs are pushing their water through the turbines, not Trump; he is spilling for dollars. Someone tried to say this Spill was because there were so many turbines offline and they had no choice. We’d agree if the spill were consistent, but its on/off and our conclusion is the feds are spilling for dollars. We think Donny, Erik, and Ivanka are long March Mid-C, no facts, just a hunch.
The Trumpkins might want to reconsider that position; the Northwest is poised to get wet again – warm wet. Rain on snow = runoff. California also takes a turn towards wetter:
Not epic, not dam-busting wet, but wetter than it has been. If any of the plants had fallen below hydraulic capacity this week, they probably will be at or above next week.
Warm weather means snow melt, but not in California, their rivers continue to fall despite a three standard deviation heat event. The Northwest is a mixed bag with the heavily manipulated plants like Coulee down while the natural river flow stations are up (Skagit, Spokane, Deschutes, Salmon). Unlike the first freshet, which lasted for about a week, this one won’t lose steam; it will continue to build as the temperatures don’t fall back into the 20s.
A new dashboard, provides a quick look at the Corps storage projects; all are down but look at the year on year anomaly at Hungry Horse – the project is 32′ fuller this year than last, in a year with more snow. That too shall pass, the shell game of draft/fill is ending, Mother Nature has put her foot down and said “enough”. Coulee is officially castrated, it’s a run of river eunuch for the next eight weeks.
TransGen
The Mid-C was an exporting machine, and so was BC Hydro. Interesting that ZP sent energy north, not south, despite the heat in LA.
Gas noms remain firm in the south, and even MidC keeps a few token plants online – thank BPA for that.
Another new dashboard, ISO outages (Gas). SP’s total gas offline is about double what it was a few weeks back. Very few plants returned, more came off in the last couple of days.
Conclusions
We’ve been long the spreads, look at the charts:
The prudent person would take some profits; the gambler would let it ride. Read on …
- March
- We’re getting tired of being short; always short at Mid-C, so we’ll mix it up a bit today
- SP15 – Short off of cooling and more rain
- Palo – Short off of cooling and strong rally
- MidC – Short off of we hate it, and more rain, more melt, and eventually BPA loses control of its system
- We’re getting tired of being short; always short at Mid-C, so we’ll mix it up a bit today
- April
- The April MidC has the biggest deviations, but we think our model is over-estimating the amount of water that will actually make it through the turbines; that said, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that MidC is going to post strong prices in April, we think single digits are coming.
- MIDC – SHORT
- We owned a bunch of this SP on|off; market has rallied to us now we are going to liquidate it all as we fear more negative onpeak prices with a cool and wet outlook
- SP FLAT
- The April MidC has the biggest deviations, but we think our model is over-estimating the amount of water that will actually make it through the turbines; that said, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that MidC is going to post strong prices in April, we think single digits are coming.
- May
- Nice rallies in the south while the MidC hangs tightly to double digits
- MidC – Short
- SP – Flat
- PV – Flat
- Nice rallies in the south while the MidC hangs tightly to double digits
- June
- Same as May
- July
- MidC has rallied, why? Off of gas?
- No, the heat rate rallied. There will be much cash pain between now and then; when June cash is posting $3.00 do you really think July will be immune? Not in this kind of water year; the melt may last til late July.
- Mid-C Short
- SP – Flat
- No, the heat rate rallied. There will be much cash pain between now and then; when June cash is posting $3.00 do you really think July will be immune? Not in this kind of water year; the melt may last til late July.
- MidC has rallied, why? Off of gas?