Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for January is currently $147.17/MWh. Relative to last week’s price of $149.26/MWh, this represents a slight decrease of $2.09/MWh or 1.4%. Volatility continues in the province, but not to the same degree experienced at the end of 2022. While several hourly periods over the past week settled above $300/MWh, there were days during which the Power Pool Price settled in the $50-$60/MWh range, even during peak demand periods. In the last week, only one period saw an hourly demand of over 11,000MW, which occurred on January 13th at 6pm MST when demand settled to 11,150MW. With mild temperatures, demand has plateaued and, as a result, the province is not experiencing typical seasonal volatility. The only notable outage this past week was the Path 2 intertie, which imports electricity from Saskatchewan, and it did not impact pricing adversely.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 3.7¢/kWh so far for the month of January, representing a 0.2¢/kWh or 5.4% decrease over last week’s settle. Demand has fallen across the province, causing the grid’s need for demand response to diminish. Natural gas-burning generation dropped by 5.7% (-2026MW) over the course of this past week. Baseload generation, such as nuclear and hydro, both lowered their output to an average of 9639MW (-0.8%) and 4812MW (-0.1%), respectively. Wind and solar increased week-over-week output (+19.6%; 1364MW, +13.7%; 24MW, respectively), whereas biofuel decreased (-8.8%; -42MW). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 3.1¢/kWh, January’s total market price is settling at 6.8¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Clara Birch, Energy Data Analyst
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