Good Afternoon,
Here are a few highlights of what’s going on in the west today.
Natural Gas Markets
Every hub aside from PG&E Citygate (down $0.01) is up day-over-day. SoCal Citygate showed the largest nominal increase ($0.19), or 5.7%.
Demand
SP15 loads rallied on the 28th and maintained that demand, for the most part, for the following two days. Loads are up roughly 500 MW week-over-week as of yesterday. Year-over-year load totals are nearly identical with yesterday just 60 MW short of last year.
NP15 has also maintained high demand for the past three days, though the week-over-week difference is slightly larger at 650 MW. 2016 loads remain just below 2015 (-25 MW yesterday) for each of the past seven days.
The difference in Mid-C year-over-year loads began to converge beginning on the 29th (difference of 1600 MW compared to 3000 MW two days prior). Yesterday was 945 MW higher than the week prior.
Temperatures
Burbank is no longer expected to dip below normal as the forecasted minimum temperature on the 6th has been adjusted from 35 to 43. If the forecast hold true, we may not see below normal temperatures for at least two weeks.
Spokane and the Inland Northwest remain on pace to drop 11 degrees below normal on the 6th. The cold spell will recover rapidly before again dropping well below normal, though this time it has potential to set a 10 year record as temps are forecasted to hit 8 degrees (10 year low set at 10 degrees).
There is large separation between the 10-Day River Forecast and the STP for each of the next ten days. This difference is highlighted on the 4th with a difference of nearly 800 MW. There has also been a higher forecast over yesterday for most of next week, especially on the 4th and 5th.
Gas Reports
Mid-C Nodal Power Summary (by Plant)
Mid-C as a whole increased over 25,000 MCF, largely driven by Mint Farm jumping from 0 MCF to 21,778 MCF. Coyote Springs II dropped from 39,024 to 0 MCF.
Demand decreased 504 MMCF in SP15, the largest nominal change of the six hubs. Rockies, Mid-C, and Great Basin all increased while NP15 remain unchanged.
Outages
Four new outages today, three of which are in SP15 where 704 MW of gas came offline. NP 15 recorded one outage, just 35 MW of gas.
Renewables
Solar generation looks like it may in a bit of a lull for the next several days before reaching much higher potential next week where we could see 6500+ MW generated on the 6th. Today is expected to generate just 3758 MW.
Mid-C saw heavy wind generation for most of yesterday where it peaked at 3932 MW. There could be a two or three hour window tomorrow where generation could breach the 4000 MW barrier.
Transmission
A lot of activity over the past three days for MC-NP. TTC collapsed twice over that time span, each time dipping to 2100 MW, off 1800 MW from normal for the past week. Flow responded by dropping to 1535 MW on the 29th and 1624 MW on the 30th. The decrease in flow lasted 3-4 hours for each of the two drops in TTC.
MC-BC hit a weekly low early morning yesterday at -1960 MW before briefly reaching positive flow just a few hours later. The rapid recovery actually raised the daily average above the 29th.
Have a great rest of your week,
William