Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool price for December is currently $98.42/MWh. Relative to last week’s price of $129.79/MWh, this represents a dramatic decrease of $31.37/MWh or 24.1%. Periods of volatility were kept to a minimum in the past week, with multiple hour price spikes occurring on only one day, the 15th, resulting in a daily price $122.26/MWh. Prices were suppressed for the rest of the week, averaging just $63.03/MWh, thanks to wind generation of over 50% of capacity on numerous days. In contrast, last week had numerous periods of volatility alongside little-to-no wind generation. Several intermittent generator outages occurred this past week, including HR Milner, Keephills 2 & 3, Sundance 6 and Battle River 5. With most of the outages only lasting a few hours, there wasn’t a major impact on the market price.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) settled at 4.0¢/kWh so far for the month of December, representing a 0.7¢/kWh or 17.5% 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 supply dropped by 21.8% (2,527MW) over the course of this past week, while baseload generation such as nuclear and hydro both increased, enhancing their output to an average of 8,597MW (+0.1%) and 3,741MW (+1.0%), respectively. Wind and solar increased output this past week (+15.2%; 2,434MW, +22.7%; 28MW, respectively), whereas biofuel decreased (-3.6%, -66MW).
With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 4.9¢/kWh and the first estimate recovery rate at 0.5¢/kWh, December’s total market price is currently settling at 9.4¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst
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