Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for April is currently $114.31/MWh, staying relatively flat with a marginal week-over-week decrease of $0.90/MWh or 0.8%. Pricing over the past week averaged $111.66/MWh, which is mostly due to elevated levels of baseload pricing. The province typically sees prices fall between $35-60/MWh during off-peak hours, but this price shifted and constantly settled near the $90/MWh mark. Despite a slight 0.6% drop in demand, intermittent outages at HR Milner, as well as continued outages at Battle River 4 & 5, have prevented hourly prices from falling off. As such, April will likely settle to the highest monthly average price in 2022.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 3.0¢/kWh so far for the month of April, representing a 0.3¢/kWh or 10.0% decrease over last week’s settle. The primary driver of this price decline is the decrease in demand across the province, causing the grid’s need for demand response to diminish. Natural gas-burning supply decreased by 9.0% or 565MW over the course of this past week, while nuclear and hydro baseload generation both increased their output (1.6%; 9,001MW, and 0.1%; 4,371MW, respectively). Solar also increased output this past week, climbing 1.1% or 90MW, whereas wind and biofuel generation decreased supply (-1.6%; -1,624MW, and -10.4%; -17MW, respectively). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 5.9¢/kWh, April’s total market price is settling at 8.9¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Clara Birch, Energy Data Analyst
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