Hi Ceejay,

Thanks !!
"I'll keep anyone who's interested posted. "
and keep me posted !!

I think you know from past exchanges where I am coming from.

I have never been comfortable with this market. No matter how I look at it, or what, it always seems to have it's own way !!!!

As an engineer, I figure that I can keep hacking away at it and maybe get it to making a bit more sense ???

In your last post you commented:
"
Massive unusual heatwaves can have a big effect on energy generation too but power generation is a relatively small part of overall consumption. "

In the above, did you actually mean "incremental increase" in power generation consumption.

See the link below. Is first attempt at sorting out areas of consumption. I did not scrutinize the numbers but overall gas fired power generation for electric power is the largest usage.

If interested, take a look at the table in the below link.
I ignore the initial entries as they relate to production usage and are what they are.

I quickly looked at the history charts, may find some interesting clues in there. [Like Industrial usage, bad economic years, or the overall decline in US industrial production should correlate ??]

Would be nice to find "monthly numbers" [Re: the Stargazer comment on December heating.]

Anyway, enough for this post. I accept the enjoyment of the "study and learning process" over losing money. Maybe someday some money can be made !!!!

Thanks again,
Lee