Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for July is currently $89.97/MWh. Relative to June’s month end price of $130.49/MWh, this is a decrease of $40.52/MWh or 31%. Hourly demand, on the other hand, increased relative to last month, by 283MW or 3.1%. While an uptick in demand typically has adverse effects on pricing, volatility has been minimal over the past week, mostly attributed to minimal outages and increased levels of renewable generation. The only major outage occurred at Sheerness 2, while increased solar generation helped offset periods during which wind generation subsided.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 4.4¢/kWh so far for the month of July, representing a 0.5¢/kWh or 11.5% increase over last month’s settle. The primary driver of this price hike is the increased use of demand response generators, which are typically expensive natural gas-burning ones. In fact, natural gas-burning generation increased by 53.8% (1,788MW) over the course of this past week. Baseload generation, such as nuclear, picked back up, increasing its output to an average of 9,536MW, a 84.29MW or 0.9% week-over-week increase. Hydro-based generation, on the other hand, decreased output, falling 12.2% to an average of 3,999MW. Wind and solar output also fell this past week (-18.7%; 935MW, -6.0%; 110MW, respectively), whereas biofuel-burning generation increased supply (+311.4%, +58MW). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 8.5¢/kWh, July’s total market price is settling at 12.9¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Clara Birch, Energy Data Analyst
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