POWER: Spanish Hydro Stocks Flat On Week, Remain at 2025 High
Spanish hydropower reserves last week - calendar week 21 – were unchanged on the week at 77.5% of capacity as hydro production fell amid increases in wind in PV output, balancing out lower nuclear and reduced precipitation.
- Despite being flat on the week, stocks remained at a 2025 high.
- The surplus to the five-year average widened to 19.4 points from 19.2 points a week earlier.
- However, the surplus to 2024 levels was stable at 11.2 points.
- Hydropower generation from pumped storage dropped to 1.06GW from 1.2GW last week, while generation from reservoirs dropped sharply to 2.75GW from 3.46GW. Run-of-river generation was at 1.34GW from 1.48GW.
- Spanish power demand last week was broadly stable at 24.19GW.
- Nuclear generation in Spain dropped to 4.3GW in week 21 from 4.75GW last week due to reduced production at the 1GW Trillo 1 nuclear power plant over 23-28 May and the outage at the 1GW Almaraz 2 nuke until 24 May.
- Gas-fired generation dropped to 4.5GW from 4.7GW the week prior.
- Solar generation in Spain last week increased to 7.9GW from 6.97GW, while onshore wind climbed to 5.3GW from 3.5GW.
- Precipitation in Huesca, near Spain’s hydro-intensive region, last week stood at just 2.3mm, down sharply from 15.5mm in week 20 and below the seasonal average of around 7.9mm.
- Looking ahead, the latest ECMWF forecast suggests precipitation in Huesca is seen at 2mm, compared with the seasonal average of around 5mm.
Wind output in Spain for the remainder of this week (Wed-Sun) is forecast at 2-2.75GW during base load. Solar PV output is forecast at 10.27-11.69GW during peak load according to SpotRenewables.
Want to read more?
Find more articles and bullets on these widgets:
Historical bullets
US TSYS: Extraordinary Measures And Cash Look Sufficient To Head Off X-Date
Treasury has about $164B in "extraordinary measures" available as of April 23 to avoid hitting the debt limit, per its regular report out Friday. That's out of a maximum total of $375B (they have used $211B).
- With Treasury cash looking healthy (around $600B), that's a fair amount of dry powder to get through the summer months to wait out the debt limit impasse. Tax receipts have looked strong with tariff revenues also starting to boost cash flows, further reducing the near-term urgency to adjust bond issuance.
- This has also helped push back analyst “x-date” expectations to later in the summer/September. We expect to hear from Treasury about its own x-date assumptions next week.
US TSYS: Treasury Market Trading Stayed Orderly In April: Fed Report
Liquidity across financial markets including the Treasury market deteriorated after President Trump's April 2 reciprocal tariffs announcement but market functioning was generally orderly, according to the Federal Reserve's semiannual report on financial stability, released Friday. (PDF link is here)
- Treasury market liquidity has been poor for years and yields were particularly volatile in early April, contributing to a deterioration in market liquidity, the Fed said.
- Nevertheless "trading remained orderly, and markets continued to function without serious disruption," according to the report, which looked at information available as of April 11.
FED: Ex-Gov Warsh: Fed Has Failed To Satisfy Price Stability Remit
From our Washington Policy Team - Some fairly sharp words today from ex-Fed Governor Warsh on the central bank (who for what it's worth is seen by betting markets as by far the frontrunner for the next Fed Chair):
- The best way for the Federal Reserve to safeguard its independence is for policymakers to avoid expanding the institution's role over time, including wading into policy areas that are outside its core mission, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, a leading contender to replace Jerome Powell as chair next year, said Friday.
- "I strongly believe in the operational independence of monetary policy as a wise political economy decision. And I believe that Fed independence is chiefly up to the Fed," Warsh said in a speech at a Group of Thirty event on the sidelines of the IMF meetings. "Institutional drift has coincided with the Fed’s failure to satisfy an essential part of its statutory remit, price stability. It has also contributed to an explosion of federal spending." His speech made no mention of Trump's tariffs or the appropriate monetary policy to deal with them.
- He said the ideas of data dependence and forward guidance widely adopted by Fed officials are not especially useful and might even be counterproductive.
"We should care little about two numbers to the right of the decimal point in the latest government release. Breathlessly awaiting trailing data from stale national accounts -- subject to significant, subsequent revision -- is evidence of false precision and analytic complacency," he said.
"Near-term forecasting is another distracting Fed preoccupation. Economists are not immune to the frailties of human nature. Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words. Fed leaders would be well-served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings."
