Weakening

Good Morning,

Nothing like stating the obvious – weakening – because that is what is happening across the WECC (aside from PV refusing to release summer). Let’s start with the weather forecast.

Demand

Seattle is pleasant, today, but take note of the 58s posted out a week. Portland doesn’t drop as far, but nearly every PNW city is in that temperate range where the HVAC becomes the screen door. That said, those 58s will inspire some of the tree huggers up here to release some carbon into the atmosphere via their dirty heaters.  It’s also worth pointing out that lows and highs are about the same, almost like how cash is trading:

Hah! The low (light load) is the new high, and the high (HL) is the new low. The market is struggling with this transition out of the insanely hot weather and back to normal. Can’t wait to look at the TradeRanks later this morning, should make for some nice reversals.

Final comment on the MidC – I am close to switching the key metric to Mins from Max, maybe not this week, but soon. So should you, the AC days are one for the history books, really doubt the MidC can muster up any more 90s in the load centers.

California

Similar, just not as extreme, as the Northwest. Both NP and SP are set to shed some massive week-on-week loads later this week, then both revert to normal, which will seem very bullish relative to the Wed-Friday demand. We’ll be sticking with Maxes for most of October in the Golden State; we are confident of another big heat wave to hit the southern part of the state.

Interior

Told you PV is hot, most days in this latest forecast are above normal.  That said, the noms  have stumbled there (and everywhere else):

Though they’ve come off across the WECC, they are surprisingly high at MidC, and we expect those to dive soon.

Loads

Down across the board, no surprise, so are temperatures:

California is warm, not hot, and the MidC is cool, not cold. Do note the Max-Min deltas are nearly flat. Not hot enough to turn on the AC, not cold enough to fire up the heaters … yet.

Generation

Outages are flat, not many new units off line and not any that came back. That will change, the ISO is entering its fall outage season, but not for a few weeks.

Here is a new dashboard …

The above is compiled from the EIA’s Net Interchange data, all three of these plants are there own Balancing Authorities and are forced to publish their actual hourlies. We just added a set of new reports over the weekend which will be included in the Ansergy Report emails we’ll be sending out later this week. It’s cool data, shows net flows down to a utility level and all kinds of interesting nuggets are just waiting to be mined.

Look at Griffith Energy, they took the plant down yesterday for a few hours, and then compare the plot below, which is a two year history. Perhaps this is the first sign of the plant dropping to 50% as it has in the past two years.  Also interesting that Gila River never did get to full capacity this summer, I guess bankruptcy is to blame?

Interchange is cool data, shows net flows down to a utility level and all kinds of interesting nuggets are just waiting to be mined.

For example,

This is the net interchange for Northwestern, and since Colstrip is within its Balancing Authority, the net exports are mostly, effectively, that coal plant. Interesting to see those flows have been cut in half over the last four days.

The nuke is back; all are running at max:

Wind is back, too:

The MidC got kicked in its knapsack yesterday, just when it didn’t need 3000 MWs of wind it got 3000 MWs of wind. We noted some cuts on yesterday’s SP solar, the LA basin received a sprinkling of rain yesterday.

Hydro

BPA is filling Coulee, probably because it doesn’t need the energy the system is generating:

While it filled, the feds also cut flows — if that isn’t a sign of bearishness, what is? Here is some more bearish Northwest news:

The other feds, the weather feds, have jacked output over and above last week’s STP. We wonder how much of this largesse was driven by the drafting to serve big loads from last week? Now it’s like the morning after the party, BPA is walking through its backyard cleaning picking up cigarette butts, roaches, and used condoms.

Need something bullish?

Cal energy continues to plummet with the LL dropping faster than HL, yet both are way over any of the prior three years. Easy to see why when you look at stream flows;

 Six of eight stations are at, or near, records (five year). The trend is your friend, but if you trend those energy lines back to 2014-16 levels, it will take you into Q1 or Q2.

We mentioned the word “rain” earlier; we’ll bring it up again:

Whoa, run to your local Burberry and pick up a couple of umbrellas, you Kalispellians – you’re set to get drenched with over an inch of precip. None of this will matter much, energy-wise, the ground is bone dry. At best, it may put out a few fires, or slow them down. Still, rain in early September speaks to a changing of the guard, summer is over.

Transmission

We prefer this dashboard to the old one because it is built off of our Real Time Reports and is updated every 30 minutes or so. The old one used BPA’s transmission flows for the DC, AC, and NI and those are hourly, updated once a day. These are hourly, updated every hour. We lose the total exports on the AC, as the Malin 500 line only picks up the ISO side. You can still track the other piece on our BA to BA Flow Report:

This data gets updated once a day, usually later in the morning (5-7 AM) and includes 80 “lines,” all hourly. We digress, back to the flows; the AC and DC are continuously running into TTC ceilings further underscoring the bearish surplus energy the hub finds itself owning.

Not many changes in BPA’s TTC:

The AC cuts from a week ago have been reversed in the front, and new ones added in the back. The Northern Intertie had a change today, the line is back to full, and nothing is happening with the DC as it prepares for its fall maintenance scheduled to begin mid-October.

Conclusions

In a post to follow.