Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool price for December is currently $90.10/MWh. Relative to last week’s price of $98.42/MWh, this represents a slight decrease of $8.32/MWh, or 8.5%. Hourly demand in the province increased marginally by 176MW, or 1.7%. Market volatility was minimal this past week, with prices reaching highs of $547.32/MWh at 9am MST on the 17th and $354.04/MWh at 5pm MST on the 19th. Prices were suppressed for the rest of the week, averaging $72.80/MWh, thanks to elevated wind generation, which averaged between 30-60% of capacity and consistently reached a peak of 70%. Outages were negligible this past week, occurring at only Sundance 6 and Keephills 1, both of which have come back online.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is currently 3.7¢/kWh for the month of December, representing a 0.3¢/kWh or 8.2% decrease over last week’s settle. Driving this price decline was the decrease in demand across the province, which caused the grid’s need for demand response to diminish. Therefore, natural gas-burning generation decreased by 9.0% to 2,193MW, over the course of this past week. Baseload generation such as nuclear and hydro both increased their output to an average of 8,881MW (+3.5%) and 3,890MW (+3.7%), respectively. Solar also increased output this past week, climbing 1.5% to 27MW, whereas wind and biofuel generation decreased supply (-6.3% or -2,381MW and -15.0% or -54MW, respectively). With the first Global Adjustment estimate at 4.9¢/kWh and the First Estimate Recovery Rate at 0.5¢/kWh, December’s total market price is currently 9.1¢/kWh, as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst
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