Good Morning,
To state the obvious, it’s hot now and growing hotter. While the nation’s attention is focused on the nightmare enveloping Houston, the WECC is building its own little hell on earth. Before launching into all of that, we want to wish a fast recovery to our friends in Houston. What a nightmare! 50+ inches of rain on a flat plain that struggles to move 3-4″. We pray all of you, your families, and friends are safe and, if not, are moving towards high ground.
Meanwhile, our pals in LA are burning up …
This is the hottest forecast in Burbank this year and, if it’s realized, will set new records by 5-6 degrees!
But the rest of the WECC isn’t sitting on the sidelines watching LA get all the glory; it’s hot everywhere.
Phoenix and Vegas refused to relinquish summer, they just love those 110s and now have another 5-10 days of above coming there way.
Even the Northwest is warm:
There will be high 90s in Portland and high 80s in Seattle; and note that every day, for the next 14 days, is above normal. Talk about a bullish forecast; this one is nearly unprecedented. Check out the 500 MB:
The high pressure extends nearly to the Yukon and expect BC Hydro to set summer peaks for loads; fortunately, its reservoirs are full, and they can generate into those peaks, but that may come at a haircut to MidC exports. That latter hub is already curtailing its exports to California:
MIdC struggles to serve load and says “Sayonara” to California. Even PV and Mead have snubbed their noses at the land of fruits and nuts:
Both hubs inexplicably cut exports yesterday, probably because they were each roasting in 110s and their prices were higher than the highly-regulated ISO’s. But we digress, here we put our Transmission thunder ahead of Gen and Hydro…
Markets
Nearly every hub’s off-peak cleared over on; maybe because Sunday was such a scorcher relative to Saturday, though these should have been Monday’s HL. Also note, the PG&E – Socal Citygate spread has collapsed with the latter trading almost at parity to the former. Maybe we have bad spot prices? Assuming we don’t, this is an interesting scenario, especially when we see how Prompt has behaved:
As expected, BOM and Prompt HL are on a roll, week-on-week, but the LL is lagging causing the spread to blow out. These moves will also force the Oct-Sep to blow out, even more, a trade we liked last week and probably took a pounding on, but like it even more, but that conclusion will be drawn in the post to follow this one. Just keep these tables in your memory bank, we’ll come back to them.
Generation
OK, something is wrong here – every hub is approaching Net Demand highs for the summer and Noms are down. Given cuts in CA imports, we have to think that sometime this week those Noms will set season highs, at least inside California.
Meanwhile, that nasty nuke sitting on the Hanford Reservation is still down, just when BPA would love to have those 1000 MWs, it doesn’t. By the way, we retooled our Nuke Status reports, the above is a summary, and we have new charts.
One bright spot, at least from the perspective of keeping the lights on inside Kalistan, is outages – they have fallen back to normal.
A few tripped, small units, and a few more came back (bigger units). Good thing, too, since the ISO will need everything to serve the crazy loads coming this week.
Hydro
The ISO still is seeing significant hydro generation, but it’s off nearly 1000 aMW in both the On and Off peaks:
There is still a long way to go before the state returns to its drought-stricken normals, but it’s heading that way. Perhaps by October, we’ll see another 1000 aMW cut in both?
Strange chart, the RFC 10 Day vs. the STP. Massively more water in the balance of the Balance of Month, apparently to compensate for the loss of CGS and the big load rallies. That’s fine if we were BPA (scary thought) we’d do the same, but all of this drafting just puts a hole in Sept and Oct, and we’d expect a very bullish STP for both, today.
Coulee is operating sideways, no major changes, week-on-week, though the reservoir has slowed down its drafts, we think that extra RFC water will come mostly out of Lk Roosevelt and by week’s end the pond will be at 1278′. One final note, Fish Spill expires on Thursday and BPA will find itself longer as a consequence, though that is when they also cut flows and start husbanding the scarce water for winter.
Transmission
Stole our own thunder, but let’s part with the cuts expected on the AC for the first ten days of Sept:
The first plot compares TTC on the AC to yesterday’s forecast; the second to a week ago. Bottom line, the line will have 1400 MW less capacity to serve our friends in California, but that line hasn’t been full of late, so maybe it’s moot?
Conclusions
See subsequent post.