bassload

science

INFO YO 006

If you have access to any natural resource and you can use those natural resources to generate electricity AND you want to use the electricity to mine bitcoin....i suppose that could get done however it will be extremely difficult and much regulatory frame work around that

not something you can just spin up in your backyard

Good evening y’all

Just coming off a INFO FLOW I’ll be quick on this. Just one nugget this time:

Folks are so concerned about what happened in the PJM Base Residual Auction for planning year 2025-2026 that you have Governor’s of states involved, lobbyists and literally everyone trying to find out the ‘HOW CAN THE PRICE FOR RELIABLE CAPACITY BE SO HIGH? I saw that a bitcoin miner got slapped by the grid operator for not properly following protocol design and not bidding in the electrical capacity they were required to bid in. I mean look, if you have programs that are in place for certain types of services that the services need to be bought because companies need them, then what is the correct price for those said services? If the market settled price is the highest its been in over a decade, people will raise questions. And that is exactly what we are seeing.

I'm almost certain that there are folks really trying to understand the demand growth and what is real and what is not. Meaning what is actual electricity demand verses fictional electricity demand. The funny thing as this DeepSeek thing gets released and then all of a sudden now folks are saying the artificial intelligence electricity demand is artificial in deed? Folks are certainly concerned that power companies are shooting a miss on demand growth and still overbuilding, like that’s never happened at a utility before.

The media has its weird way of showing all sides of the story, even if both talk out of both sides.

Anyway, hope y’all have a great weekend and dont forget to check out Energy Market INFO FLOW 01312025 for more meat on the bones.

Peace,

Bass

*ALL views and opinions are my own. All data/research comprised can simply be looked up by any search engine.

INFO YO 005

‘If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.’ - Ernest Rutherford, 1871 to 1937

There is a time to laugh, a time to sing, a time to dance, a time to be angry, a time to cry and a time to have confidence.

Music Artist to check out: Mohini Dey, incredible bass player

its good to get back to a little old school, lets get it goin!

At the time of this writing:

NYMEX NG: MAR 2025 $3.056/mmbtu

LNG JKM: JKMH5 $14.295/mmbtu

LNG TTF: TTEH5 $15.625/mmbtu

WTI: MAR 2025 $72.87/bbl

Bitcoin: 1 bitcoin = 1 bitcoin

PJM RT LMP: $33.28/mWh

ERCOT RT LZ HOU LMP: $11.98/mWh

Long Island Zone K RT LMP: $117.56/mWh

MISO: $28.39/mWh

Weather

So far Jan 2025 has been the coldest winter in 25 years. HDD’s or Heating Degree Days in the US totaled around 1080 something for the month of JAN. Its has certainly been WAY colder over history and we just need to zoom out a bit over time. FEB 2025 is supposed to be warm. Summer 2025 is supposed to be slightly above average in temperature and in precipitation. With JAN 2025 being quite cold in the US, we had snow in Houston TX and also Savannah GA. Can confirm from some friends and they saw they never se’int the snow before. It snowed in Houston y’all, this is quite interesting. Since Natural Gas folks are trading MAR on the prompt month and natural gas is at that number above and if the weather man falls asleep, could see a calm summer? Shall I dare say? On the flip side also can confirm that the great state of North Dakota printed -20F in JAN 2025. Yes. That’s correct. Negative twenty degrees Fahrenheit. I still, to this day, dont get how people enjoy living in this type of weather.

tq50

Market Intel

It feels good to be back. I usually use this ‘market intel’ space to vent a little bit. I can say that there is a really big interest in growth with mergers and acquisitions in the energy world. One thing that is interesting is that this demand for electricity specifically for data centers may in fact be a huge hype. I believe I mentioned this to you my fellow readers. More marketers are coming to the market and the big marketers are getting stronger, larger, and stronger and larger. Whats interesting is what that could do to the overall marketplace for electricity and natural gas supply and how those supply entities will ultimately go back to a more vertically integrated approach aka monopolizing. Perhaps. Seeing the renewable folks get really interested in doing weird and kinda cool projects figuring out solutions for electricity generation. Everything from solar to fracking heat to spin turbines, literally everything. As you know nuclear energy generated into electricity is extremely valuable to modern life. Check this chart, let me know in the comments if you feel anything about the growth of uranium that is commercially supplier for nuclear reactors.
U.S. uranium supply to commercial nuclear reactors

Electricity

Still to this day, the forward price for electricity in multiple markets across the US and Canada is significantly higher than the ‘as generated’ price for electricity. There are a lot of reasons as to why this is happening and to know every reason you would need to break it down by company and how suppliers are interpreting the market. ERCOT as an example for a 40-45% load factor customer type, total electricity supply price with all components added is approximately $60/mWh including the shape, congestion, ERCOT settlement fees, securitization fees, ancillaries, losses and everything else (theres more). PJM pricing has significantly decreased over the past 4 years, but again, no where close to 2020 prints. Just received some intel that the Base Residual Auction for PJM capacity market will take place and settle 3/11/2025 mark it down folks. I do expect a lot of normalcy in price this time around considering there are a lot of lobbyists including the PA state governor really making sure folks know how serious the 2025-2026 settlement was to electricity consumers. Canadian markets are really becoming interesting as the market reform happening there is causing higher pricing due to complicated unknowns. A lot of changes coming and my concern is that regulatory change will be more aggressive in creating price volatility for electricity and…...

Natural Gas

JAN 2025 NYMEX settled at $3.51/mmbtu. The last time we saw natural gas settle for the month higher than$3.50/mmbtu was JAN 2023 and that settlement was $4.74/mmbtu. Dry production settled at 103.5 BCF/day for the week ending 1/23-1/29. Production over 100 BCF has been a consistent number nationally for the lower 48 in natural gas production. Demand for natural gas is up over last years demand but down week over week. JAN 2025 put a lot of pressure on natural gas demand given the volatile cold snaps with the demand coming from the power sector and the residential/commercial sector. Having the cold winter with stronger demand and now a weak FEB is causing demand for natural gas to reduce. Dare I say the shoulder could be sooner than expected? We have more natural gas in storage than we have had over the 5 year average and, still keep in mind, the JAN 2025 weather. However week ending 1/24 was the 4th largest withdraw on record with a withdraw of 321 BCF. Simply put we just have a lot of natural gas in the ground, still. Declining natural gas rigs over last year by 16% however 472 oil rigs currently.

LNG

Unfortunately not much to report here other than we are seeing feedgas demand output be in that ~14 BCF/day consistently now. I do believe there are some more LNG delivery locations coming alive but I will report back on some more detail there.


Conclusion

Take one day at a time. Try to change the world that you live in to make it better. Dont try to define better because anything can get worse. Live life to the fullest. Hope you enjoyed the recent Info Flow. Please comment and share.

Peace and Love- Bass

ALL views and opinions are my own. All data/research comprised can simply be looked up by any search engine.

for full version with charts check substack

https://bitcoinbassload.substack.com/p/info-flow-01312025?r=xxv2c

Energy Market INFO FLOW 01312025

Good morning all

Hope you had a great week. Take this read into the weekend and have a great one….

#1- I suppose one of the hot topics currently is that the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) and the IIJA (Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act) funding is now halted on the monies flowing into these acts. ‘Funding disbursement freeze’ they call it. Folks kinda saw this coming and with any new administration in the US, those new folks will have their own ‘energy agenda’. Is that the case though? Is the damage (meaning a lot of money spent) already done? The DOE announced recently that with the combination of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, clean energy investments in the US doubled from $111 billion in 2020 to $236 billion in 2023. To me, that’s a lot of money. But now, there’s no more money due to the new administrations executive order. Will the new administration ‘Keep Making America Green’? By the way, the Green New Deal is canceled also. The ‘make ya head tilt sideways’ moment is that this executive order also called for an ‘end to the electric vehicle mandate’. Isn’t Mr. Musk and Mr. President on the same team? If the IRA money is stopped, no EV tax credits? Ummm….guys? Finally, check out in the executive order about the ‘social cost of carbon’. Honestly, I didn’t know that existed and I cant make this stuff up.

#2- Been doing some TX research and finding the electric generation stack in the interconnection que for electric generation to come onto the grid (Electricity Reliability Council of TX). Here is a small break down as of 1/1/2025:

    Total Capacity under study: 379,494 MW (Mega Watts)

        Coal = 0 MW

        Nuclear = 0 MW

        Total Gas types = 27,578 MW

        Wind = 34,450 MW

        Solar = 154,487 MW

        Batteries = 159,775 MW

        Other = 3,204

            other is hydroelectric, fuel oil, geothermal and other types

    Interconnection agreements executed: 91,097 MW or ~24% of total capacity under study

    Total Commission date in month of Dec 2024 = 2,310.37 MW

Summary of this: there is a lot on the wait list, most wont get to the party. But if there’s a list of ~380,000 and only 2,310.37 gets to dance at the party, is that just the way it is? Then read #1 again and say to yourself, well if that money for green development is stopped, does the wait list shrink significantly in total amount on the wait list? You decide. We need all forms of energy.

#3- On 1/16/2025 the DOE announced a loan for utilities serving ~14.78 million customers to move forward with 8 infrastructure projects in 12 states totaling a $22.92 billion dollar bill. The projects are sizeable and they include transmission projects, renewable energy development, updating natural gas pipelines and more. Take a wild guess where the money is coming from. These loans are funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and if you read #1, that money flow was stopped per an White House executive order on 1/20/2025. Talk about a rug pull. What’s wild is that we do need certain projects in order to maintain, upgrade and just simply have more infrastructure to serve folks to the long term.

Just FYI, There are links inside for some of these Info YO’s. If you see an word underlined, you can go down the rabbit hole with me.

Peace and Love to y’all,

Bass

*ALL views and opinions are my own. All data/research comprised can simply be looked up by any search engine.

https://www.energy.gov/lpo/articles/deal-digest-lpos-latest-conditional-commitments-help-keep-power-affordable-through-new

https://www.energy.gov/lpo/articles/lpo-year-review-2024

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/unleashing-american-energy/

INFO YO 004

INFO YO 003

Good morning to everyone, I’m thinking to start flowing these on Saturday’s. The INFO YO’s were intended to be light reading and what better way than to check this out over the weekend. Anyway, here we go…

#1- One thing that ceases to amaze me is the amount of mood swings folks have when making impactful decisions. One week federal land is banned to frac on, next week approvals for fracing on federal land are a ‘go’ just under a different word salad description. Just a few days ago it was spread through the internet that the current (and I mean were two days away from someone new coming in) administration just signed an executive order to allow data center development on federally owned land. Now, we know that these types of deals are for a certain types of large data center companies and the average data center wont have access to this perhaps. The executive order lays out all the variables however the costs associated with these sites are weighted more on the data center developer or operator side. Fracing? No. Data Center? Maybe… What kind of data center? Bitcoin Mining? Absolutely not. Build robots and high power machine learning? Sure, just make sure you have more money than everyone else. Deal? You can decide. By the way, did you vote for us and contribute to a campaign? Right this way….

#2- Something is interesting that I myself am understanding more about is Biofuels. Biofuels are ultimately derived from organic resources created by plants and human things which can be grown and harvested over and over again. There’s Biodiesel which is a liquid fuel produced from vegetable oils and animal fats, Ethanol which is made from plant starches and sugars (corn), and even wood used to produce heat. Wood is good, and it seems that the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office announced a $1.35 million fund to accelerate wood heater innovation. Apparently still a lot of folks use wood to heat their homes, doesn’t surprise me that much. But what does interest me is the ability to take waste and make it into something useful. Turning trash into gold, trash into cash or trash into bitcoin (hehe), that kind of action is just great to see. I think the world would be a better place if folks just picked up the trash they leave behind. Its not ‘biodegradable’ and it wont just disappear. What to do with waste is a problem as old a the beginning of time.

#3- I wrote an article on AI and super computers and all that. Take a look at the advancement of quantum computers, its quite interesting. Its stated by the DOE that, “Quantum computers harness the laws of quantum mechanics to perform certain calculations exponentially faster than today’s supercomputers.” Quantum computers appear to be much better and faster than super computers. This stuff goes well beyond my reach however whats interesting that quantum computers, according to experts, still exhibit error rates far higher than conventional computers and also they are noisy. BUT, they will change the world. I think of it like a 180 pound person is trying to bench press 500 lbs. The gyms I used to work out in would be shouting and grunting to get that weight up. Quantum computers dont like the ‘judgement free zone’ I suppose. For more information on quantum computing check this out: Quantum Computing.

Have a great weekend till next time!

Just FYI, There are links inside for some of these Info YO’s. If you see an underline you can go down the rabbit hole with me. Peace and Love to y’all

*ALL views and opinions are my own. All data/research comprised can simply be looked up by any search engine.

https://microtime.com/quantum-computing-in-2024-breakthroughs-challenges-and-what-lies-ahead/

https://ungovernablemisfits.com/the-big-hype-about-ai/

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/articles/us-department-energy-selects-three-projects-advance-wood-heater-innovation

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2025/01/14/statement-by-president-biden-on-the-executive-order-on-advancing-u-s-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence-infrastructure/

BooksAndArticles

“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” —Mister Rogers


Hello to everyone, here are some more interesting things to check out in your light reading…

1- There are some articles circulating that one of the largest acquisitions in the energy industry is about to go down. Its not small and one could perceive that this is too big? Nah, couldn’t be. But it might. Ultimately this would bring a significant amount of electricity generation assets under one roof along with a NUMBER of other business types that will be absorbed and become one family. A lot of generations assets getting bought here. The question is, is it go big or go home move? Or is it a we want to change the world in which we live strategy? In the world we live in now you need money to do these types of things in the energy world. Just an interesting thing to think about that’s all. A lot of electricity generation assets, a lot of service companies, consumers they currently serve, all under one roof. Its just a really large acquisition and in this game, big folks can and do get stronger….perhaps.

2- HA this is wild to me. Ready for a new acronym? EGS stands for Enhanced Geothermal Systems. The DOE in Feb 2024 gave some monies to three projects that would boost the enhancement of this type of technology. What is the technology you might ask? EGS is defined as a human-made reservoir that creates permeability in hot rock to capture heat for energy. OK, whats permeability? Permeability is the state or quality of a material or membrane that causes it to allow liquids or gases to pass through it. So how do they get the heat out the ground? Drill a hole in the ground? or Fracing (yes no k in fracing)? Smells like a duck and quacks like a duck. OK, so your telling me that the DOE is funding geothermal projects to frac the heat out of the ground to generate electricity and fracing is looked down upon for Oil or Natural Gas on some other ‘type’ of dirt? Seems that way, see for yourself. Project FORGE the Frontier Observatory of Geothermal Energy project, ill drop the link here you can see the video. Looks like some kind of drilling to me out in Utah. All in the name of 100% clean electricity by 2035 US government goal. Oh, and those monies for those three projects? $60,000,000 says the internet.

3- This is completely random but the Consumer Electronics Show is in Las Vegas this week. Friends were telling me how huge it was and there’s so much stuff going on there. Reviewing some stuff it caught my eye about how much robotics is being developed. I should assume this but, well, you know. This topic can correlate with how much electricity does a robot need to charge itself to walk around with us and to continue to walk with us, just like a human? Makes me think about how the human anatomy and energy used to run that vs the electricity needed to power a robot. For how long? Can the robot match the human in running a 40 meter dash? A brief snapshot of where my brain goes with this type of stuff. Check out ‘Melody’ who has advanced body mobility. And open source?

Just FYI, There are links inside for some of these Info YO’s. If you see an underline you can go down the rabbit hole with me. Peace and Love to y’all

*ALL views and opinions are my own. All data/research comprised can simply be looked up by any search engine.



INFO YO 002

@bassload's bio

awesome, can there be a 'energy' territory?  I would like that very much.  posted my first content just a minute ago

let me know how you like

friends in the bitcoin community talked to me about posting my contact on here.  there is no 'energy' topic listed so Id like to be the first one!

INFO YO 001

Energy geek creating transparency in energy markets for all.  