Product Update – Northwest Loads & Resources

Posted on by William Griswold

Good Evening,

No doubt,  the BPA actual loads and generation is one of the best reports on the internet. Ansergy has been using this data for years to backcast its forecasts and we’ve now been asked to add it to our site. BPA offers up four fields:

  • Demand – BPA’s control area
  • Hydro – plants under its domain
  • Thermal – an assortment of gas-fired and steam plants
  • Wind

Good stuff, we’ve added to their list to include several additional items and created three historical views (Hourly, Daily, and Weekly) and three levels of aggregations (Min, Max, and Average) for HL and LL.

Additional Fields 

  • HT – HourType, HL or LL; used in the daily or weekly aggregations
  • Year – used for year on year comparisons
  • Week – Week (1 to 52); used to compare across years
  • Date – Week ending; twelve years
  • Agg – Aggregation method (Min, Max, Avg)
  • PP – Power Price
  • GP – Gas Price
  • HR – Heat Rate
  • Temp – Temperature using KDPX (Portland, OR)
  • Demand – BPA’s demand
  • Hydro – BPA’s hydro
  • Thrml  – A collection of thermal plants BPA manages 
  • Wind – Wind energy in BPA’s control area
  • CGS – Columbia Generating Station (the nuke)
  • AC – Transmission line, aka COB
  • DC – Transmission line, aka NOB
  • NI – Northern Intertie (to BC)
  • IE – (Imports) or Exports; negative implies net imports (AC+DC+NI)
  • Net – Demand – Thermal – Hydro – Wind – CGS + AC + DC + NI
  • WindCap – Capacity of wind under BPA’s control area
  • WindPF – Wind Plant factor (Wind / WindCap)

Sample Reports

This is a list of all the fields from the weekly table.

The weekly report has four filters:

  • HT – Hour Type (HL or LL)
  • Agg – Min, Max, or Avg
  • Week – 1 to 52, select the current week to see 12 years of same week data
  • Year – choose any number of years from 2007 to 2018

There are four types of data offered in Ansergy’s report (all aggregation levels)

  • Market Prices – PP (Power Price), HR (Heat Rate), or GP (Gas Price)
  • Loads and Resources – Load, Hydro, Thermal, Wind, and Nuke
  • Transmission – COB, NOB, Northern Intertie, and Net Exports (Imports)
  • Wind Stats – Wind MW in BPA’s control area and Wind Plant Factor (note the very low factor of 4% today)

All aggregation levels can be plotted and downloaded.

This is a plot of Peak Demand for the last 12 years. You can add any of the items to the plot.

This is an example of multiple items; in this case, we added Wind Capacity (Windcap), Wind Energy (Wind), and Columbia Gen Station over the last twelve years. To change time horizons, just click one of the links above the plot. To return to the table view, click the “Chart Data” URL.

This is a plot of hourly hydro and demand for the last 21 days. You can zoom into any period:

 

Access the report under the Fundamentals / Generation / BPA L&R item. If you need help making dashboards or want additional clarification on the items drop us a note.