Power Fundamentals

Most arguments about power prices are arguments about assumptions.

I'm Matt Jennings. I have spent about thirty years building and running production cost models of the North American power system — ERCOT, WECC, and the Eastern Interconnection, in Aurora, EnCompass, and Plexos. Utility resource planning first, then merchant trading risk, then fifteen years leading data teams whose job was to hand a number to someone who was going to act on it.

This site is where I write that work down. Not forecasts, and not opinions about where prices are going, but the machinery underneath: what a model is actually solving, which assumptions carry the result, and how to tell a careful answer from a confident one.

It is a teaching site. There is nothing to buy here. More about me.

Recent essays

All essays
  • Why two credible forecasts disagree

    Two competent teams model the same market and land eleven dollars apart. The gap is almost never in the engine, and knowing where it actually lives changes what you should do about it.

    Forecasting · Price formation

  • What a production cost model actually does

    The primer. What the solver is minimising, what the constraints represent physically, and why the answer is a schedule rather than a price.

    Modelling · Fundamentals

The newsletter

One essay at a time, sent when it is finished rather than on a schedule. No news roundups, no market commentary, no sales.