Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool price for February settled at $156.89/MWh. Relative to last week’s price, this is a decrease of 9% or $14.09/MWh. Pricing near the end of the month was fairly suppressed, which helped soften the impact of February’s cold snap to average prices. While the first 17 days of the month saw prices average $213.95/MWh due to inclement weather, prices averaged $63.74/MWh during the last 10 days of the month. That said, a few volatile periods, on the 26th between 6pm and 12am MST and on the 27th from 7am to 11am MST, served to elevate prices to $244.78/MWh and $171.21/MWh, respectively. Outages at Genesee 3 and Keephills 3 contributed to the volatility experienced on these days.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is currently at 2.0¢/kWh for the first few days of March, a drop of 1.6¢/kWh or 44% compared to February’s last reported settle. Supply and demand levels have both decreased month-to-date (-4%, 16,667MW and -2%, 16,346MW, respectively), with supply dropping at a faster rate relative to average February levels. This would normally put upward pressure on HOEP, but a strong shift away from expensive natural gas has helped lower hourly prices. While nuclear has slightly lowered its baseload (-4%, 8,668MW), gas cut its supply sharply (-32%, 1,329MW). Other generating sources also decreased their supply, but wind made strong injections to the supply grid (+34%, 2,392MW). Currently, with the first Global Adjustment estimated at 7.9¢/kWh and the first estimate recovery rate at 0.5¢/kWh, February’s total market price is 10.4¢/kWh.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst / Sarah Clemente, Energy Data Analyst
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