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Skipping Stone Releases Win-Win Solution White Paper to Finally Solve Gas & Electric Market Synchronization

Boston – May 22, 2024 – Skipping Stone President, Greg Lander, and CEO, Peter Weigand have collaborated to develop a comprehensive set of solutions to finally solve the elusive gas and electric market synchronization issues. This paper is a follow-on to the original paper published in 2013 that resulted in several operational changes to address key issues, however, didn’t result in fully solving the synchronization issues.

Now that the markets have adopted past rules modifications, which helped both markets, the authors are putting forth in the paper a series of additional structural market modifications that address the full solution set. A sampling of new solutions include:

  • Hourly Pipeline Park & Loan Services
  • Load Factor-Based Rates
  • Firm Shipper Revenue Sharing
  • New Pipeline Expansion Model
  • New Pipeline Revenue Stream
  • ISO Operational Coordination

Both an explanation of the synchronization issues and the authors’ proposed solutions are contained in the full white paper. The white paper is free and available for download on either SkippingStone.com or CapacityCenter.com

“Several years ago, pipeline rules were modified to address synchronization issues. Those rules helped but didn’t solve 100% of the problem. Since then, the electric grid has and will continue to shift to more renewables. This shift puts more pressure on gas-fired generation to deliver on call, which in turn relies on pipelines to deliver in a manner that isn’t operationally and by rule how pipelines are supposed to work. Essentially pipelines are expected to provide a free ramp-up, ramp-down service to generators, which is not fair to pipelines and their firm shippers. At the same time, since it is free, generators are at risk of ISO penalties and potential blackouts because there isn’t a market structure to address the need for hourly gas service for generators,” says Greg Lander, Skipping Stone President.

Peter Weigand, Skipping Stone CEO, continues, “Our goal with this white paper is to lay out a proposed solution set that various stakeholders can engage with Greg in a healthy collaboration that hopefully leads to new market rules that address the key issues.

 

Global Media Contact:

Nancy Young
Skipping Stone, LLC
NYoung@skippingstone.com
(832) 279-3029

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Capacity Center Releases 2020 Pipeline Capacity Market Year in Review Report

Boston, Mass – April 12, 2021 – Capacity Center, a Skipping Stone subsidiary, released the 2020 Pipeline Capacity Market Year in Review report today. In 2020, 768 separate entities completed more than 61,000 capacity release trades on over 100 pipelines.

“Notably 90% of capacity release trades are in the spot market with terms of less than a year,” said Skipping Stone President Greg Lander. “While the Top 5 trading firms are the same firms as last year, there was a good bit of jockeying in the rest of the Top 20. The two biggest movers were NRG, which jumped from number 12 to number 6, and Vitol who jumped from number 25 to number 12.”

The report is packed with charts and analysis for 2020, including:

  • Top 20 Pipeline Capacity Traders
  • Top 20 Capacity Pipelines and Release Percentages
  • Top 10 Producer-Marketers Holding Firm Capacity
  • Top 10 LDCs Holding Firm Capacity
  • Trading Partner Diversity Rankings… and much more

For your complimentary report click here.

For more information about the rankings and analysis, contact inquiry1@capacitycenter.com or (978) 717-6144.
For an editable press copy contact nyoung@skippingstone.com.

About Capacity Center

Capacity Center is owned and operated by the energy markets consulting firm, Skipping Stone LLC. Its automated services monitor capacity release offers, system notices and deal award information, and provide available transactions and their details as they occur to its customers via email for trading, risk and regulatory compliance, and for deal origination and valuation purposes. Please visit CapacityCenter.com for more information.

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Capacity Center Announces New Service: Capacity Locator

CapacityCenter_com 1000Online Access to Pipeline Capacity Deals on All Pipelines

Boston, Mass – December 5, 2018 – Capacity Center announced the launch of its new service offering, Capacity Locator. This new service allows subscribers to see every biddable capacity release offer on every pipeline in one online location. Users can click through from Capacity Locator straight to the pipeline EBB if they are interested in bidding on available capacity. The service shows all current open offers by pipeline with the ability to refresh throughout the day to keep up to speed as the market changes.

Capacity Locator is free to subscribers and complements Capacity Center’s other information services: Capacity Offer Bulletins (detailed offers emailed as they are posted), Capacity Awards Reports (daily summary with pricing data of all deals done the previous day), Open Season Alerts, and Critical Notices (outages, OFO’s and any notices impacting gas flow). Companies can choose from among the 104 pipelines in the Capacity Center system and subscribe to those pipelines they are interested in or active on.

“Capacity Locator was developed to save time and effort for users who monitor pipeline bulletin boards throughout the day to shop for capacity deals. Capacity Locator allows the user to monitor all the offers on all the bulletin boards in one location and jump straight to the bulletin board to bid on a deal of interest,” explained Greg Lander, Capacity Center President.  “With the number of deals increasing each year, and profits more and more dependent on taking advantage of deals as they become available, the ability to keep up to speed and yet maintain labor costs were the key drivers behind Capacity Locator.”

About Capacity Center

Capacity Center www.capacitycenter.com operates the only 24/7/365 natural gas pipeline data center covering 104 US pipelines. Its proprietary systems monitor and track capacity release offers, deal awards, system notices, and open seasons. Subscribers can select from one to all pipelines. Capacity Center also provides market analytics and historical capacity transaction data to trading companies, pipelines, regulators, retailers, financial institutions, and others. Capacity Center is wholly owned by Skipping Stone, LLC.  www.skippingstone.com

For additional pipeline capacity market information and/or analysis, please contact Katherine Castillo, kcastillo@skippingstone.com or 978-717-6144.

Media contact: Nancy Young, Marketing Director, Skipping Stone, nyoung@skippingstone.com,  (832) 279-3029.

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