Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool price for December’s month-end settled at $38.74/MWh. Prices dipped $0.70/MWh or 1.8% from last week’s settle of $39.44/MWh. Market volatility was minimal this past week, with demand remaining flat and only one hourly price spike occurring on the 28th at 6pm MST; prices reached a high of $106.89/MWh, before quickly reverting to their monthly norm. In terms of generator outages, intermittent outages at HR Milner and Sheerness 2 were experienced. In addition, Battle River 4 went offline on the 29th and did not come back online until December 2nd. We saw Genesee 1 return to service on the 27th, which helped to settle the other outages during this time. Outages totaled 763MW during the last week of the month, but prices were not severely impacted.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is currently at 0.6¢/kWh for the opening two days of December, a drop of 45% or 0.5¢/kWh from November’s last reported settle. Relative to average November levels, December’s demand and supply have both increased, with the former outpacing the latter (+9%, 15,952MW; +4%, 16,595MW). Helping to keep prices low is a strong injection of wind energy supplied to the grid: an increase of +1,036MW (+58%) to 2,826MW. While gas increased its supply (+20%, 729MW), the reliance on gas for this time of year is still very low. Most other sources decreased their supply, including nuclear (-4%, 9,005MW), hydro (-4%, 3,958MW), and solar (-65%, 17MW), while biofuel increased its supply (+151%, 60MW) compared to November levels. Currently, with the first Global Adjustment estimated at 10.7¢/kWh, December’s total market price is 11.3¢/kWh.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Data Analyst / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst
Add comment