Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for April is currently $114.26/MWh. Relative to last week’s price of $93.54/MWh, we’ve seen a $20.72/MWh or 22.1% price increase. There were a few days of volatility over the past week, most notably on April 7th and 13th, where pricing averaged $200.05/MWh and $153.43/MWh, respectively. Volatility on the 7th carried over from the night prior, where prices between 8pm and midnight MST averaged $456.79/MWh. At 7am MST on the 7th, prices peaked at $623.11/MWh, and went on to average $323.46/MWh from 7am to 10am MST. One of the main contributors to this increased volatility was Path 2, the intertie between Saskatchewan and Alberta, being offline and not returning to service until the afternoon of the 13th. Coinciding with this outage was minimal levels of wind generation, which only supplied 5-10% of the province’s maximum capacity. This resulted in an over-reliance on more expensive forms of natural gas generation. Generator outages this past week included previously mentioned Path 2, as well as Battle River 4 and Path 83. We have seen a number of generators return to service during this period, including Sheerness 2, Battle River 4, Path 2 & 83, Sundance 6 and Genesee 1.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 4.1¢/kWh so far for the month of April, representing a 0.9¢/kWh or 22.1% decrease over last week’s settle. The primary driver of this price decline is the decreased demand across the province, causing the grid’s need for demand response to diminish. Natural gas-burning generation decreased by 17.4% (-858MW) over the course of this past week. Baseload generation, such as nuclear and hydro, decreased by 0.5% and 0.1%, respectively, lowering their output to an average of 8,709MW and 4,282MW, respectively. Wind and solar increased output this past week (+11.5%; 1428MW, +3.7%; 88MW, respectively), whereas biofuel decreased (-9.1%, -16MW). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 5.9¢/kWh, April’s total market price is settling at 10.0¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst
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