Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for December is currently $354.07/MWh. Relative to last week’s price of $314.44/MWh, this represents an increase of $39.63/MWh or 12.6%. Pricing throughout the month has been volatile, with several days within the past week settling to over $700/MWh; prices on the 20th and 21st settled to $742.89/MWh and $701.54/MWh, respectively. Extensive cold periods continue to have an extreme impact on pricing, as parts of the province have felt like -30°C over the past week. As a result, the province set new hourly demand records of 12,187MW on the 19th and 12,193MW on the 21st. The AESO issued emergency alerts on the 20th and 21st to help curtail demand in the province.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 5.7¢/kWh so far for the month of December, representing a 0.4¢/kWh or 7.1% increase over last week’s settle. The primary driver of this price incline is the increased use of demand response generators, which are typically expensive natural gas-burning ones. Natural gas-burning supply increased by 13.3% (2617MW) over the course of this past week. Baseload generation, such as nuclear, improved output to an average of 8021MW, a 13.23MW or 0.2% increase compared to last week. Hydro-based generation, on the other hand, decreased output, falling 2.0% to an average of 4839MW. Wind, solar, and biofuel decreased week-over-week output (-4.9%; 1794MW, -5.2%; 27MW, -2.3%; 26MW, respectively). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 6.0¢/kWh, December’s total market price is settling at 11.7¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Clara Birch, Energy Data Analyst
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