Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for July is currently $119.36/MWh. Relative to last week’s price of $89.97/MWh, this is an increase of $29.39/MWh or 32.7%. Hourly demand in the province has continued to increase, with a week-over-week uptick of 179MW or 1.9%. In fact, last week experienced some of the highest hourly demand periods we have seen since late March, reaching as high as 11,183MW on July 12th at 6pm MST. Heat warnings in parts of the province, alongside Calgary Stampede being in full swing, caused daily prices to peak at $247.34/MWh and $354.93/MWh on the 11th and 12th, respectively. Generator outages, on the other hand, were minimal this past week; HR Milner experienced intermittent outages but has since come back online.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 5.1¢/kWh so far for the month of July, representing a 0.6¢/kWh or 11.8% increase over last week’s settle. Driving this price hike is the increased use of demand response generators, which are typically expensive natural gas-burning ones. Natural gas-burning supply increased by 7.1% (2,051MW) over the course of this past week, while baseload generation such as nuclear and hydro both decreased, lowering their output to an average of 9,374MW (-1.7%) and 4,042MW (-0.2%), respectively. Wind and solar increased output, climbing 9.2% and 6.3% to 918MW and 121MW, respectively, whereas biofuel decreased (-16.9%, -52MW). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 8.5¢/kWh, July’s total market price is settling at 13.6¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst
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