Reference

Glossary

The energy-market terms behind Baseload, in plain English. If a label on any page isn't obvious, it's probably defined here.

Prices & units

$/MWh: Dollars per megawatt-hour, the price of one MWh of electricity. Every power price here is in $/MWh.
On-peak: The high-demand weekday hours (about 7am to 11pm). Our hub prices are on-peak, the window traders watch most.
Hub: A benchmark pricing location for a region (PJM West, Mass Hub). Like a regional index for power price.
Henry Hub: The U.S. benchmark natural-gas price, in dollars per MMBtu. Gas is the input fuel; power is the output.
$/MMBtu: Dollars per million British thermal units, the energy unit gas is priced in.
Basis: The price difference between two locations (e.g. a regional hub vs the benchmark). Requires a market-data vendor; not in EIA.

Marginal fuel: The last, most expensive plant needed to meet demand. It sets the price. Usually natural gas, which is why losing nuclear pushes price up through gas.
Heat rate: How much gas it takes to make power. Power price is roughly heat rate times gas price, so the dollar impact of a supply loss scales with gas.
Implied heat rate: On-peak power price divided by gas price. Shows whether power is rich or cheap relative to fuel, independent of gas swings.
Spark spread: Power price minus the gas cost to produce it, a rough generator margin.
Tight / Long: Tight means demand is close to available supply, so prices are jumpy and sensitive to any loss. Long means ample slack, so losses get absorbed.
HDD / CDD: Heating and cooling degree days, a measure of how cold or hot it is. They drive gas (heating) and power (cooling) demand, and therefore price.

Baseload: Always-on generation (nuclear, coal) versus peakers that ramp up and down. This product tracks nuclear baseload availability.
MW offline: Capacity not currently producing, the core supply signal. Nameplate capacity minus what is generating.
Capacity factor / Availability: Generation divided by full capacity, as a percent. 100% means the fleet is running flat out.
Refuel / outage: A planned shutdown (every 18-24 months) to replace fuel and do maintenance. The scheduled supply dips.
Scram / forced outage: An unplanned reactor trip. The surprise supply loss our same-day NRC wire catches first.
Overrun: When an outage runs longer than scheduled, keeping supply offline past its expected return.

Scheduled vs projected: Scheduled = a utility-published date. Projected = our model estimate where no date is published yet. We always lead with scheduled.
P10 / P50 / P90: The confidence band on the forward curve. P50 is the central case; 80% of outcomes fall between P10 (low) and P90 (high).
Price residual: On-peak price minus its own recent (30-day) norm. Strips the gas/season level so we can isolate the effect of a supply loss.
ISO / RTO: The regional operators that run organized power markets (PJM, MISO, ERCOT, CAISO, ISO-NE, NYISO, SPP).

Missing a term? Tell us and we'll add it.