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NEI Energy Markets Report (March 27th - 31st)

Here's a summary of what went on in the energy markets last week:

Electricity prices mostly decreased throughout the country (see pages 1 & 2). Gas prices at the Henry Hub rose $0.08 to $7.18/MMBtu (see page 4).

From 2006-2010, the expected capacities coming online are 38,570 MW for natural gas, 36,146 MW for coal and 17,466 MW for wind (see page 7).

Nuclear capacity availability was at 82% last week. Fifteen units were in refueling outages. Palo Verde 3 and Palisades began their refueling outages and Hatch 1 completed its refueling outage in about 44 days (see pages 2 & 3).

For the report click here (pdf). It is also located on NEI's Nuclear Statistics webpage.

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Comments

David Bradish said…
Nick,

Appreciate the comments. This is a projection of actual orders over the next 5 years.

If you check out the report you will see what the expected capacities coming online are for each year up to 2010. Here's what the report classifies as capacities coming online:

"Data includes units that are/have planned, filed for permit(s), under test conditions, under construction, undergoing feasibility study, or site preparation underway."

Global Energy Decisions (the data provider) keeps track of every "New Entrants" project taking place. They have actual data on the unit, company, capacity, status etc. and are not forecasts.

This is the actual data of what's expected to come online. That's the benefit of this type of service versus looking at annual forecasts from EIA. This data changes a little bit each month and every time we get the monthly update we want to show whats going on in the short term.

You won't see expected nuclear capacities till 2015 or so. Nuclear is the only energy which is not on the list.

We expect that the readers will understand that the reasons wind and gas capacities taper off in 2009 and 2010 is due to shorter construction periods like you noted. Coal takes a little more planning and that's why you see more capacities added in the later years.
David Bradish said…
Nick,

I like your new wording and think it might be a more correct way of stating it. I'm a statistician and think deeply about numbers and not as much about wording.

Yes, wind is doing quite well for itself.

The most recent capacity factors we have right now are for 2004. 2005 figures should be posted here in the next couple of weeks.

Here's a link to 2004:
http://www.nei.org/documents/
U.S._Capacity_Factors_by_Fuel_Type.pdf

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