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Long-form articles on how weather drives U.S. power markets. Written for analysts, traders, planners, and anyone who wants a deeper read on the data products surfaced across Weather Workbench.
A practical overview of how temperature, wind, solar, and storm patterns translate into electricity demand, generation output, and wholesale prices across the nine major U.S. ISO regions.
The U.S. House voted 308–117 to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. For grid operators, the change is more than a calendar fix — it shifts when solar generation arrives relative to morning demand, reshapes the winter duck curve, and eliminates the 23- and 25-hour trading days that create scheduling headaches twice a year.
As a July 2026 heat dome pushed Central Park to 100°F, New York's grid operator (NYISO) served about 32,410 MW — within striking distance of the state's all-time record. A short look at the heat, the demand, and the calls to conserve.
On July 2, 2026, an East Coast heat dome pushed PJM electricity demand to roughly 163,000 MW — within striking distance of the grid's all-time record. A short look at what happened and why the grid held.
What HDD and CDD actually measure, why the natural gas and power industries standardized on a 65°F base, and how to interpret degree day departures in the context of weekly load forecasts.
A walkthrough of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center's extended outlooks: how the probabilistic categories work, what they actually forecast, and how to use them in weekly load and gas trading workflows.
Why renewable forecasting matters more than installed capacity, how ISOs build and use wind and solar forecasts, and where the major sources of error originate.
How hurricanes affect generation, transmission, and distribution; what utilities do before, during, and after landfall; and how to read the National Hurricane Center products that drive operational decisions.
A short reader's guide to NOAA's monthly ENSO Evolution, Status and Predictions slide deck — when it drops, what the current edition says, and what the next several months may hold for U.S. weather and the power grid.
What a wind ramp actually is, the meteorological setups that produce them, and why the shape of a wind forecast matters more to ISO operators than the daily total.
Why solar forecasting is fundamentally a cloud problem, how satellite-derived irradiance products work, and what wildfire smoke, fresh snow, and Saharan dust do to fleet-level output.
How the U.S. Drought Monitor, reservoir levels, snowpack, and stream temperatures translate into hydro output, thermal-plant cooling-water limits, and wildfire-driven transmission risk.
FERC's May 2026 joint assessment finds record capacity additions but warns that extreme heat, western drought, and unpredictable data-center load growth remain the primary threats to summer grid reliability.
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