Since early 2018, the forward power market in Texas has been in various states of backwardation (prices for a commodity get less expensive into the future). This backwardation made longer retail electricity agreements attractive as each additional year purchased was a chance to capitalize on lower futures prices and reduce the overall weighted average price. Last fall, the slope of that backwardation reached its maximum negative slope (see Figure 1). On November 1, 2019, the price for calendar year 2021 was trading at approximately $44/MWh, while 2028 was trading below $24/MWh. The $20/MWh discount from 2021 to 2028 produced a significant amount of backwardation and a downward sloping forward market for wholesale electricity.

October 31st is the deadline for building owners to post their Energy Efficiency Rating Label. This is required for all buildings over 25,000 square feet that are listed on the 2020 Covered Buildings List for benchmarking compliance. In December 2017, the New York City Council passed Local Law 33, which was later amended by Local Law 95 in 2019, requiring building owners to post this label in a conspicuous location near each public entrance. The intent of this law is to provide transparency into a building’s energy usage and efficiency.

Once upon a time, major hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico had the potential to wreak havoc on natural gas markets and send prices soaring to levels that are 4X what they are today. Late last month, as Hurricane Laura was heading toward major gas production centers, many were asking if gas prices would turn bullish and increase because of the impact to natural gas supplies. If this were 2005, the answer would have been a definitive “yes.” But today, the correlation of natural gas prices and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico is not what it was fifteen or even ten years ago. There are several reasons for this change.

In many electricity markets, natural gas is often the marginal fuel. This means that gas is the fuel that is used to generate the next additional amount of electricity that is required to ensure that there is enough electricity supply to meet the grid’s demand. Over the last ten years, the amount of natural gas generation in PJM has increased from 25% to nearly 40% of the fuel mix. It should be no surprise that the rise and fall of electricity prices throughout PJM is highly correlated to natural gas price movements.

Lately, the bulls have been running in NYC’s electricity market but there has also been a consolidation in forward prices. Figure 1 shows calendar year strips for wholesale electricity in New York City for 2021 through 2024. Wholesale prices in all calendar years hit their all-time lows in late March/early April, shown in the red oval, and have rallied over the last 6 months. Also note that over the last two years, near-term prices have always been less expensive that longer-term prices. This can be seen in the figure below as calendars 2021 and 2022 (blue and black lines) have consistently been less than 2023 and 2024 (green and yellow lines). This is referred to as a contango market, where prices get more expensive into the future.

Over the last few months, we have described Texas' increased reliance on wind generation to help meet peak demand requirements for electricity. Over the summer, the rolling black-outs in California were heavily covered in the news with many asking how a state known for its technological advancements with the most solar power has become vulnerable to insufficient power supplies.

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Temperatures and humidity remain elevated all across Texas, which will increase electricity demand into the late afternoon. The peak demand forecast today is 70,397 MWs, which is expected to occur at 5:00 PM CST.  This would set the all-time record peak for September and exceed the previous high of 69,187 MWs, which was set last year. With cold fronts in the long-term forecast (woohoo!), this may be one of the hottest days of the month.

PJM has issued another hot weather alert today across the region. Temperatures are likely to exceed 90°F with high humidity causing a steady rise in electricity demand. The five Coincident Peak (CP) demand days for 2020 in PJM are shown below in Figure 1. There is a strong risk that a new CP is set this afternoon as forecasters expect that today’s load will surpass 144,000 MWs by 5:00 PM EST.

Tasseography is a fancy word for fortune-telling by reading tea leaves. Humans often search for patterns in hopes of predicting the future just as we do with financial markets. While serious investors would never resort to reading tea leaves, technical traders and fundamental analysts look for patterns and trends to better understand and anticipate market movement.