Market Insights

Years of long system conditions, low capacity prices, and tightening environmental regulations have placed mounting economic pressure on PJM's thermal assets. Now, PJM is faced with the prospect of widespread thermal retirements amid delayed resource additions and the challenge of meeting significant demand growth from AI-driven data centers and electrification. This webinar will discuss Ascend's view on the dynamics of the PJM power market and the economic outlook for power generators and clean energy development as these driving forces reverberate across REC, capacity, and energy prices.

2023 proved to be an anomalous year for electricity prices in CAISO, driven by an unlikely combination of mild summer weather, abundant hydro generation, low gas prices, and an absence of heat waves. A storm is coming, however. Aggressive decarbonization policy mandates, record demand for renewable energy, and rapidly increasing load growth signify a robust need for new capacity resources and will present serious challenges for system reliability.

In this webinar previewing the Ascend CAISO 5.1 Market Report, Dr. Gary Dorris, CEO at Ascend Analytics, joined Dr. Brent Nelson, Managing Director of Markets and Strategy, to discuss the underlying structural power market challenges that lie ahead in CAISO.  

Despite aggressive clean energy mandates in New York and the New England states, cost concerns have begun to test policy commitments. Rising peak demand, increasing capacity prices, and a scarcity of capacity resources further complicates the renewable energy development outlook in New York ISO (NYISO) and New England ISO (ISO-NE).

In a recent webinar, Dr. Gary Dorris, CEO of Ascend Analytics, and Dr. Brent Nelson, Managing Director of Markets and Strategy, discuss key developments, updates, and complications in northeastern energy markets, as well as Ascend's latest market forecasts for NYISO and ISO-NE.

In this webinar, we discuss our outlook on the SPP power market, identifying key dynamics and opportunities for renewables and storage.

As solar buildout grows in ERCOT, critical grid conditions are increasingly becoming associated with sunset net load ramps. Whether wind generation falters or rises with the setting sun determines the magnitude of the daily ramp and is the key driver for ERCOT price dynamics. As a result, wind can either cause ‘superduck’ ramps or squash price volatility. In this webinar, we will provide an overview of Ascend’s latest ERCOT forecast and the outlook for market forwards, scarcity, surpluses, and clean energy economics.

In this webinar, we will discuss Ascend's latest market outlooks for PJM and MISO as elevated gas prices, passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and continued clean energy demand from policy and ESG goals have strengthened the outlook for clean energy and clean capacity resources.

As renewable energy battery storage projects deploy more frequently in increasingly competitive markets, asset owners and operators need to be able to iterate more quickly across different locations, asset configurations, and dispatch strategies. At the same time, they need to be able to rapidly deliver accurate, bankable information that streamlines project finance decisions.

In this webinar, Jonah Simon, Director of Battery Products for Ascend Analytics, and Keegan Campanelli, Product Manager for BatterySIMM™, discuss new BatterySIMM capabilities that allow customers to shorten the cycle time between optimizing asset configurations and generating revenue forecasts that banks and project financiers trust.

Soaring load growth, rapidly increasing electricity demand, and significant additions of intermittent renewable resources to the supply stack have produced observable shifts in real-time price peaks and associated high volatility. These fundamental market changes pose significant challenges to hedging approaches and instruments traditionally used by energy retailers.

In a this  webinar, Dr. Gary Dorris, CEO of Ascend Analytics, Devdatt Maganty, Senior Manager of Portfolio Management, and Carley Dolch, Director of Business Development, share advanced hedging strategies that allow energy retailers to maintain profitability and construct future-proof portfolios amid razor-thin margins and unpredictable market dynamics.

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Batteries are uniquely poised to earn supernormal returns during the energy transition. However, the long-term uncertainty of storage value, as well as the variability of revenue capture by storage, can challenge the ability of low-risk, low-cost investors to provide the capital needed to accelerate renewable energy storage deployment across the U.S.

In this webinar, Dr. Gary Dorris, CEO of Ascend Analytics, and Adam Hise, Managing Director of Storage Risk Solutions, discuss how Ascend's EnSurance™ revenue insurance solution can help accelerate storage deployment by transferring market risk away from assets so as to enable more efficient storage project financing.

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Substantial opportunities exist for merchant storage projects to capitalize on renewable-driven volatility in energy markets, especially in CAISO and ERCOT, which are projected to grow at 20% through 2029.  

In a recent webinar, Dr. Gary Dorris, CEO of Ascend Analytics, joined Mr. Mike Huisenga, Managing Director of Business Development, and Dr. Carlos Blanco, Managing Director of Analytic Solutions from Ascend Analytics, to discuss storage bid optimization strategies, revenue stacking, revenue-optimizing risk management practices, and the decarbonization value of batteries. 

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Resource planners must ensure resource adequacy and maximize economic value with the energy transition. Because a greater portion of energy supply flows from renewables and battery storage, maintaining reliability requires more advanced reliability planning that captures the impact of weather on unit outages, energy production, and transmission lines. Using traditional reliability models that miss the linkages of weather on unit outages and rely solely on predefined distributions or historical data can lead to biased and inconsistent results that present an inaccurate picture of system risks.

Dr. Brandon Mauch, Director of Resource Planning Analytics for Ascend Analytics, lead a webinar that discussed how weather-correlated reliability models improve resource adequacy outcomes while maximizing value. Dr. Mauch was joined by Dr. Gary Dorris, CEO and Co-Founder of Ascend Analytics, and Mr. Zachary Brode, Manager of Analytics for Ascend.

In this webinar, analyze considerations for the role of temperature and correlated outages in RA assessment, role of storage and duration implications for RA analysis, ELCC by resource type, and emerging technologies to support renewable integration.

In this webinar, we review clean energy procurement and M&A trends relevant to Corporates, CCAs, Utilities, Investors & Asset Owners.

This webinar introduces new approaches beyond PPAs to increase project value for renewables and storage.

Maximize the value of storage and hybrids and live operations with adaptive forecasting to market conditions that continuously optimize bid curves to provide the competitive edge.

In this webinar, Ascend will describe the IRA bonus tax credits and identify areas where power market dynamics and tax incentives coincide for better-than-ever investment in the energy transition. We’ll also uncover new geographic opportunities that have materialized.

This webinar will cover key developments since Ascend's last forecasts and estimated changes for upcoming releases to address rising gas prices, stranded asset risks for thermals, and growing renewable penetrations.

In this webinar, Ascend's resource planning experts will discuss: risks of load shortfalls in today’s systems,  model requirements for best practices in resource adequacy analysis, resource adequacy metrics and their use in planning and ELCC analysis of weather-driven and energy limited resources.

This presentation will cover what energy investors and developers need to understand about power markets as the energy transition progresses.

This webinar will explore the relative risk and return of alternative contract mechanisms and how to shape a portfolio that leverages high market conditions for increased return on capital and our portfolio risk management experts will discuss how to assemble an OTC contract structure and compare relative risk and return.

Learn how to support project financing with strategies to derisk merchant battery storage.

Renewable & Storage Procurement in CA: 2021 was a big year for renewable and storage procurement in California. In this webinar, Ascend's clean energy procurement experts will discuss their take aways from 2021.