Market Intelligence
Consulting

Market forecasts for the energy transition

Renewables and storage deployment across the US are rapidly changing energy markets, disrupting historical price patterns and price formation mechanisms, and undermining traditional approaches to fundamental price forecasting. This disruption has created a need for new modeling approaches and fresh insights. Ascend Market Intelligence provides expert analysis and fundamental price forecasts for navigating the new future market dynamics of the energy transition, supporting modern resource planning and procurement decision-making.

Any decision maker can benefit from Ascend's unique view of the future of power markets. Our consulting services support custom forecasts and explain the unique drivers and fundamentals underlying our price forecasts.

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Why choose Ascend Market Intelligence?

Ascend offers unique insight & value to utilities, developers & financiers for managing risk, including:

  • A fresh perspective of where energy markets are headed, accounting for the market impacts of increasing renewable and storage deployment, inclusive of the regulatory & policy landscape.
  • Use of long-term economic equilibrium as a fundamental anchor, ensuring that forecasts are consistent with a defendable economic outlook.
  • Calibrating hourly and sub-hourly price volatility to ensure reflection of observed price dynamics.
  • Forecasting zonal and nodal prices while accounting for the key geospatial driving forces that determine basis price evolution, including renewable resource potential, cost of land, and physical barriers.
  • Leveraging up-to-date forward market data and long-run fundamentals.
  • Weather-driven simulation of power prices that capture the critical correlations between prices, volatility, load, and renewable generation.
  • Seamless integration into the PowerSIMM and BaterySIMM platforms.


More about Ascend Market Intelligence

Ascend Market Intelligence is specifically designed to seamlessly integrate with Ascend's software platforms PowerSIMM andBatterySIMM, making it a perfect choice for developers to value their project and utilities to develop modern integrated resource plans and request for proposal/offer valuations.

Subscribers receive Market Reports updated 2x per year, covering the latest policy and regulatory trends, market performance, and Ascend's 20+ year forecasts of day-ahead and real-time energy prices for major trading hubs, ancillary services prices, and capacity prices. In addition, customers can designate three nodes for Locational Marginal Price (LMP) forecasts as part of their subscription. Additional nodes can be purchased for an additional fee.

Ascend's forecasts and Market Intelligence services cover the following markets:

  • CAISO
  • SPP
  • ERCOT
  • PJM
  • ISO-NE
  • NYISO
  • MISO
  • Pacfic NorthWest / Mid C
  • SouthWest / Palo Verde/Colorado

Ascend's Approach to Fundamental Forecasting

Given the unprecedented shift to renewables and storage, future energy markets will be unlike anything we have seen in the past. Therefore, Ascend's forecasts of future market conditions are based on a unique combination of market forward data and long-run fundamental modeling that accounts for the emerging market dynamics of future supply mixes rather than legacy market dynamics of thermal baseload generation. The Ascend framework is shown below:

Ascend Analytics Fundamental Forecasting Framework

Ascend forecasts power price shapes, ancillary service prices, capacity prices, and sub-hourly price dynamics based on the changing supply and demand dynamics. These forecasts are internally consistent, reflective of opportunity costs, and anchored to long-run economic equilibrium, ensuring a coherent and realistic view of energy market dynamics that is needed for informed decision making.

Ascend begins with macro level drivers that affect future energy supply and demand conditions, including climate and renewable policy, economic growth, electrification, technology costs, and stakeholder demand. Ascend provides its own base case forecast but can also develop custom forecasts for clients based on alternative assumptions.

Subscribers receive simulated hourly and sub-hourly spot prices generated using Ascend's proprietary weather-driven simulation engine.

Trusted Advisor

The mark of a forecast is the trust placed in it by those who make procurement decisions and whose dollars are at risk. Ascend's Market Intelligence reports have been used to support over $3.2 billion of renewable and storage project financings and are used by major utilities and financiers across the US for resource planning and valuation. Ask us about our references.

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