Good Morning,
Cold is coming; the Northwest is set to realize the most frigid temperatures of the year.
What sets this event off from the Dec 10 is the westward (and southward) extension of the cold, a true nor’easterly.
Mid-C Composite Temperatures
All hubs, aside from Palo, realize negative ten-day anomalies.
The previous lows for the composite Mid-C were low 20s, today’s forecast hits a low of 17 and falls across most of next week, the lowest of the low on the 2nd, a federal holiday, but Tues-Thurs are not that much warmer. Also worthy of our attention is the string of no precip days; nearly ten ..bone dry, nada.
Seattle (Sea-Tac) sees lows around 25 though Weather Channel puts the lows in the teens. Also, dry as in nothing.
Sacramento sees the same but also has hints of another cold snap the following week, though it is short-lived.
Phoenix flirts with below normal, also note that average ticks up twice in the plot … tis the season for higher lows as we begin the grind into summer.
Burbank gets a touch chilly and that second week of Jan shows colder weather than next week.
Hydro
Today’s forecast is bullish for the long-term hydro outlook both because it is dry and cold; that cold will force BPA into deeper drafts, the dry keeps the snowpack anomalies low.
Flows out of Arrow soared yesterday, up 24kcfs from last week, all heading towards Coulee and the other 15,000 MWs of generating capacity.
Flows on the Mid-C are up at BON and the border, but down everywhere else.
Mid-C storage is now lower than any of the last four years, need to go all the way back to 2012 to find a lower year.
California is below normal, snow-wise, while the other WECC hubs are above, even the Mid-C broke 100 yesterday as it gapped 5% in a day!
Nearly every basin saw big jumps, look at the Cowlitz – up 18% in a day, or the Spokane – up 9%, and big money basins, Flathead, Clark Fork, and Kootenai all sported 5% rallies. But, bear in mind that everything goes dry for the next ten days so what giveth get taketh and going into the first Flood Control directive we probably will end up just below normal – we’ll go out on a limb and suggest TDA is tagged with a 97% on that day.
The RFC continues to jack its forecasts, even after jacking its STP yesterday; next week will see five-month highs in Mid-C hydro energy. The hub will need the energy.
TransGen
No ISO units returned, but a few tripped:
Two Paloma units are off-line, the rest is hydro that doesn’t have the water to run anyways.
SP saw an uptick in gas noms for its generators but still massively lags past years; the Northwest sees a lot of idle capacity too:
Both Grays and Goldendale are spinning, waiting for some higher prices, that is coming, by Monday we’d expect all of these to be online.
BC Hydro quit selling, they took their ball and went home; not sure they’ll be back, either, given how cold the province is going to get. But the Mid-C shrugged off the selfish Canadians and jammed a boat-load of power into Kalistan.
Both the AC and DC are well above the weekly averages and have been steadily increasing the loading of the lines; that too shall pass on Monday as the hub shrugs off the ISO and keeps its energy at home.
ZP is back to exporting into NP, turns out those flows into SP were a short-lived phenom; be interesting to see what happens on Tuesday.
Conclusions
Simple conclusion – it’s cold. As for the buy/sell question, not so simple.
Every hub, both on and off, have rallied and the Mid-C has rallied the most. We were long, we like rallies, but has it rallied too much? Is it time to sell the fact, we already bought the rumor. We’re tempted, after all we want to lock in our 2016 bonus and we just made it bigger, but we’ll be a pig and …
- Mid-C – stay long, get longer
- SP15 – sell our length, go flat
- Palo – short it off the recent rally
By the way, these dashboards are now on your account, open up the left-side item called “Ansergy Dashboards” – same with bookmarks; you now have exactly what I use.
Feb has rallied too, not sure why we haven’t seen any temperature forecasts out that far. Sympathy rallies (off of Jan week one) are fade opportunities
- Mid-C – short
- SP15 – short
- Palo – short