Market Monitor Blog
Your home for commercial electricity and natural gas market news—covering market factors like supply, demand, regulatory affairs, weather, and more.
New York’s Indian Point Nuclear Plant Will Close, But What’s Next Is An Open Question
For all the recent debate over the Trump administrations efforts to bail put struggling coal and nuclear plants, there’s no doubt that the Indian Point generation station in Buchanan, N.Y., is still going to shut down. What’s less than certain, though, is the effect of the closure on reliability and… Read more
El Niño To Warm Winter Temperatures And Cool Energy Demand
NOAA scientists have issued an El Niño watch, predicting a 50 percent chance of conditions by fall, and a 65 percent chance by winter. The El Niño weather pattern is characterized by weakened surface winds and warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, prompting warmer than average temperatures in the… Read more
ISO-NE Integrates “Pay-For-Performance” Incentives Into Capacity Market
ISO-New England has integrated new “pay-for-performance” incentives into its forward capacity market that are designed to address rising generator outage rates that have left some power plants unavailable during critical times. Read more
Did The Massachusetts DPU Misread The (Smart) Meter?
Last month, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) decided that the deployment of smart meters wasn’t a good idea at the moment, saying the costs outweighed the benefits and citing “weaknesses” in the business case behind the proposal. With all respect to DPU, we think that’s a missed… Read more
Britain’s Wind Drought Pushes Power Prices to Record High
Britain’s nine-day wind drought is expected to continue for two weeks, causing power prices to reach the highest level in a decade. Though low wind power does not threaten supplies in June when demand is low, persistent deficits in wind generation could lead to increased grid vulnerability. Read more
99 Problems: US Nuclear Plants
They cost up to $9 billion to build and boast concrete walls up to 12 feet thick. But the 99 operating nuclear power plants in the US are facing a nuclear winter. Read more
Nuclear Power Play: U.S. Throws Its Weight Behind Subsidies
The U.S. government has thrown its regulatory and executive power behind subsidies for struggling nuclear. Although the action focused only on uneconomic facilities in Illinois, the consequences may well go beyond state lines. Read more
PJM Stakeholders Criticize Competing Capacity Market Plans
PJM stakeholders criticized two capacity market reforms in comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with most saying they prefer the status quo to the competing plans. Read more
Cyber Attacks and Energy Companies
A recent Bloomberg story claims the US energy industry is not doing enough to prevent potential cyber-attacks. Read more
Mysteries of the Market: Natural Gas Trading
Trading liquidity is often measured by trading volume and the number of participants. And narrow trading ranges and relatively low standard deviations make is less favorable for market participants to actively trade futures, reports Platts. Volatility has been low in recent weeks, but what about the… Read more