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Article from "The Desk"
Friday, February 15, 2008 Volume 11
What’s better than having
topshelf,
real-time power flow data for US markets? Power flow data combined
with market intel, that’s what. Such was the thinking when
Louisville-based Genscape acquired power market intel services
provider EnvaPower recently. As it happened, Genscape was already a
long-time partner and data supplier to Enva and the new hookup is
expected to expand both the depth and distribution of Enva
subscription services. Currently Enva’s daily intel briefings cover
MISO, NE, NY and PJM. Enva exec Hudson Gilmer says they will be
rolling out CA market products soon, and an ERCOT report in Q3 or Q4.
Genscape chief Sean O’Leary says Enva’s expanded access to
Genscape flow data covering the US, Europe and elsewhere, is expected
to speed up Enva’s expansion significantly.
While Genscape’s power flow
monitoring services are well known to Desk readers, the Enva claim to
fame may be less well known. We gotta tell ya though, we were
impressed by what we saw and heard this week. Heard? You heard right.
On top of the daily electronic reports you receive on price forecasts
and other goings-on in the market, you get a call every morning from
a live human analyst for a custom briefing on the market you hold
dear. But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves.
Enva offers a standard package of
power
market intel stuff – PowerIQ – that includes demand forecasting,
weather/forward pricing, a dynamic price simulator and so on. Gilmer
says you buy an enterprise license to specific regions for the daily
reports and associated alerts and briefings. You start the day around
7 a.m. with a recap report, basically looking at what happened and
why the day before. Why were there spikes in the mid-afternoon, why
the drop just before lunch? It looks at demand versus forecast,
generation, actuals versus projections. Keep in mind this isn’t
purely quant stuff, it’s human analysis with words and all. Gilmer
says all the reports are purely “fundamentals based.”
“We have models that we’re truing
up each morning. What were the actual power flows at the key
interfaces, imports and exports, actual demand, prices? We
recalibrate our models, and by the time it’s all done, we have a
pretty high level of confidence we can explain what happened and
further, model and explain day-of and next-day prices,” he says.
Next, around 9 a.m. you get a
balance
of day report – or “BAD” report in the local vernacular. This
includes assumptions, market drivers, fuel prices, congestion,
maintenance and so on.
Lastly, a little later on you
receive
the next-day report. “When that report goes out, we believe we’re
giving you the most comprehensive view of what is likely to happen
during the day: the drivers, the risks and so on. We’ll discuss
specific generation units that we think will remain down, or won’t
come up when planned, and the impact on price. Finally, our customers
get a call from one of our analysts for a briefing one on one, right
after the next-day report goes out,” he says.
We signed up for one of the
briefings –
it really was a human. My particular analyst – they have dozens –
had been in the market for a number of years and managed to field
every question I tossed his way regarding the PJM. He also had some
additional insights about risks and so on. It took just a few
minutes. Customers are also allowed to call during the course of the
day, he said.
Gilmer says customers can run
individual scenarios through the Enva power models as well: “What
would it look like to have an additional 500 MW of demand at this
particular point at this particular moment?” and so on.
The one downside to this array of
services, if you can call it a downside, is that neither Genscape nor
Enva have yet any sort of Web-based front end for users to bang away
at the various services and data themselves. It’s all e-mail or
telephone-based.
All this may change in the future,
however. We asked O’Leary if a Web-based product is in the cards
and he said, “It will come.” He says they’re now looking at how
to modify the Genscape offering to be able to bring in new data
sources.
Gilmer was a bit more hopeful and
near-term on the Web concept. He says they developed something called
“Power Console” for internal use. It manages about 10,000 sources
of real-time data that they use to create the various daily reports.
Power flows to prices to weather to river flows. Incidentally, they
get weather data from WSI and DTN Weather. “This system is
something we’ve always just used internally, but we’ve been
thinking lately about possibly
introducing it to customers. “ He says they are now jointly looking
at this concept with Genscape. “Maybe it can be a value to both
companies as a customer interface.” We’re sure that should be a
very strong offering.
O’Leary says the Enva spread of
services will at some point extend into the natural gas sector –
this was big news to us. Recall that Genscape’s vast network of
power flow monitoring devices around the country isn’t its only
asset base. They also monitor real-time natural gas flows in
pipelines. He says Enva will soon look to do the same thing in
natural gas. O’Leary says the gas intel services will likely cover
ERCOT and the Midwest.
Genscape also remains on the
acquisition trail. He says in two or three years he wants the company
to be the “leading supplier of fundamental energy information –
what’s moving the market, what’s important to the market. You
should be able to get it all at Genscape.”
O’Leary says EnvaPower will
continue
to operate as a stand-alone entity. The firm is currently hiring
developers and market analysts.
For more information, contact
Hudson
Gilmer at
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