Our Energy Market Intelligence Team: Get to know Randy Burns

Direct Energy Business wants to take a quick moment to introduce the newest Market Intelligence Team member, Randy Burns.

Randy graduated from Pennsylvania State University with degrees in Finance and Economics. After graduation, he launched his career at Griffon Energy Capital, LLC, a hedge fund located in Austin, Texas, where he worked as a trading assistant on the Natural Gas and Power Desks. Randy moved back to his hometown of Pittsburgh in January 2009 to work as a consultant for Co-eXprise, a firm focused on procurement solutions. He utilized his wholesale market experience to specialize in the procurement of electricity for large commercial and industrial users.

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Energy buying strategies in a volatile market

Per last week’s Energy Market Update, I have provided some energy buying strategies in the current volatile market.

Market Overview
The trend in natural gas and electricity prices has been favorable for most energy buyers over the last month. NYMEX natural gas futures have fallen significantly and both regional gas and power prices have followed the downward trend. The key reasons are that weather has been moderate and storage injections have been much larger than a year ago.

The details are in the numbers below (all prices are in MMBtu):

Prices as of 6/24/13 and % change since 5/24/13.

Prompt Month $3.70 -0.58
12-Month Strip $3.89 -0.47
Calendar 2014 $4.04 -0.23
Calendar 2015 $4.21 -0.22
Calendar 2016 $4.38 -0.19

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Summer energy demand management for businesses

Many people don’t realize that some of the components to their electricity spend are demand-based. Demand is the highest instantaneous usage during a period of time. Think about it this way: this morning you may have driven to work and during that trip, you covered a certain distance and averaged 25 mph. It is unlikely that you were at 25 mph the entire time because your speed fluctuated. You may have reached 35 mph, which in this example, can be thought of as your peak demand. Just as the road has to be sufficient enough to meet your peak driving demand, the electrical infrastructure has to be sufficient to meet your peak electrical demand. The greater the difference between your average consumption and your peak consumption, the more expensive on a per mile or per kilowatt basis it is to build and maintain that infrastructure.

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