Good afternoon,
Cooler than normal temps should be in store for the Northwest, at least through the first week of the two-week forecast. The second week will see a return to warm temps throughout the WECC, though especially so in California.
The Northwest continues to pace dry, especially Oregon. Arizona shows potential for rain in all fourteen days as monsoon season approaches.
SP-NP congestion peaked at two dollars yesterday in the day ahead markets. NP-Captain Jack showed similar numbers, also with two dollars of congestion.
AECO ended its free-fall after increasing $0.26 day-on-day, though the hub remains down $1.16 over the past week. SoCal Citygate fell $0.77 day-on-day after reaching a week-long high of $3.69 on the 5th. NWP-Wyoming dropped nearly $0.30 over the past three days.
Crude is off $0.65 since late last night, essentially continuing the downward trend that started on May 22nd after peaking at $72.58.
All hubs fell $0.03 to $0.04 overnight for July gas.
Mid-C gas demand fell to 952 MCF today, down from 1,028 yesterday and 1,191 on the 2nd.
Northern California gas storage bounced back to 443,000 MCF today after dropping to 0 yesterday. SoCal had a more modest increase of 30,000 MCF.
Portland is projecting a high of 77 today, three degrees above normal, but temps will take a sharp turn south across the Northwest moving into the weekend. Saturday projects a high of just 62 in Portland, while Spokane shows up in the 50’s.
Demand rose 170 MW yesterday as off-peak loads saw moderate growth while heavy loads sat mostly unchanged.
Demand crashed 900 MW yesterday in the daily average as peak loads fell 1,000 MW and off-peak loads dropped more than 500 MW. Look for a rebound today, however, as early morning loads jumped compared to yesterday.
San Jose is projecting daily highs more than five degrees below normal for both today and tomorrow. Cool temps today will soon change to 90+ degrees by next week as the 13th projects a high of 90. Sacramento will come close to triple digits on the 13th as the current forecast calls for 98 degrees.
Demand fell in SP as well with the daily average finishing 500 MW lower day-on-day yesterday. Peak loads fell 1,300 MW though off-peak demand increased 400 MW.
Cooler than normal temps aren’t making their way into Southern California where Burbank is projecting above normal through June. Highs should stay in the 80’s through the next six days before the 13th brings a high of 90.
Phoenix projects triple digits through the end of the month and could reach as high as 112 on the 13th (I’m noticing a trend here). If 112 holds up, it would be a new 10-year record for the day, eclipsing the previous high by three degrees.
Yesterday’s average daily demand fell 40 MW short of Monday as decreased peak demand was mostly offset by increased off-peak demand.
California cooled off considerably yesterday, at least in terms of day-on-day movement. The Southwest bounced back quickly from a cooler Sunday.
No changes in the Nuke Status report as Columbia remains at 65% while all others are generating at 100%.
Mid-C gas noms increased to their highest point since April with 321,899 MCF, nearly 100,000 MCF increase day-on-day.
Mid-C wind peaked at a paltry 1,458 MW yesterday, down from a high of 2,845 MW the day before. SP solar remained stable with 7,000 MW at its peak yesterday. Each of the past ten days has stayed north of 6,600 MW in its peak.
ISO gas outages plummeted to 1,482 MW yesterday, the lowest level in months as nearly all SP gas returned online (just 251 MW remain offline, down from 1,856 on the 31st).
Hydro
Grand Coulee gen saw a sharp increase last night, rising from 185,000 to 212,000 CFS in just two hours. The Spokane River saw its flows more than halve as the river is moving at just 8,602 CFS today, down from 20,000+ CFS last week.
The Clark Fork’s record flow came to an end late last week as well.
The sideflows into both Middle and Lower Columbia, as well as Upper and Lower Snake all fell below average since last week as the runoff took a downturn in earnest over the weekend.
Albeni Falls began shedding elevation on the 1st with 1.3 feet dropped as of today. The other four charted reservoirs continue to build.
Pockets of snow remain, but the runoff has run its course for most of the West. Still some heavy concentrations in Western Montana though much remains east of the divide.
Grand Coulee snowpack levels fell below average on May 21st and sit more than an inch below normal as of today.
STP is forecasting heavily above the 10-Day forecast in the last five days where we see the 10-Day’s floor completely fall from underneath it.
Transmission
Watch for the new TTC reductions for NOB beginning on the 18th and extending to the 25th. 177 MW were cut from TTC for each of the hours.
Energy Oracle
For those of you unfamiliar with Energy Oracle, the following description had been included in the automated Oracle emails we have been running. Note: Oracle will now be included in our daily blogs instead.
In a thinly traded market, the opportunities are many, the time horizon to execute (either spec or hedge) is narrow. Ansergy scours 388 potential execution opportunities several times a day and ranks all of those against each other. We call that process “APT” – Algorithmic Power Trading, and yes, this has been used with a real book, and yes again, it does work. You can view APT from a hub, derivative, hour type, or compare all opportunities against each other (we call this the ‘WECC’ level).
In this report, we summarize the term markets for quarters (Prompt Q out two years) for all four derivative types (Outrights, Locational Spreads, Period Rolls, and On|Off). From that expansive list of opportunities, we will cull a few that looked intriguing. Ansergy does not make execution recommendations, we simply highlight execution opportunities. In the tables and charts that follow we will cast light upon a couple that caught our eye. We suggest you examine your firm’s exposure to that product (or lack thereof) and draw your own conclusions.
Note on Hedging vs Speculation: we view the hedger’s (Utility, End User, Generator) decision-making process being the same as the Speculator. In other words, APT is equally apt for either user type since both are driven by the same goal of capturing the best price.
Here are today’s notable charts, derived from the APT Summary rankings.
The forecast has been a strong indicator of market movement for the last month and with the market at a near-low and the forecast beginning to trend up, this trade could prove beneficial.
The trade has been producing wins for a couple weeks now.
Every trade has a PID (product ID) that can be called within the APT History table linked above, the one depicted is PID 686. Hindsight is 20/20, but this at least gives you an idea of how often the recommendation has been correct.
Have a wonderful day,
William