The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 5.6¢/kWh so far for the month of July, representing a 0.5¢/kWh or 8.9% increase over last week’s settle. The primary driver of this uptick in price is the increased use of demand response generators which are typically expensive natural gas-burning ones. Natural gas-burning supply increased by 10.8% (2,291MW) over the course of this past week. Baseload generation, such as nuclear, picked back up, increasing its output to an average of 9,628MW, a 225.53MW or 2.4% increase compared to last week. Hydro-based generation, on the other hand, decreased output, falling 0.8% to an average of 4,012MW. Wind and biofuel increased week-over-week output (+0.6%; 880MW, +10.6%; 59MW, respectively), whereas solar decreased (-1.6%, -121MW). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 8.5¢/kWh, July’s total market price is settling at 14.1¢/kWh as of today.
Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for July is currently $119.80/MWh, resulting in a very minimal week-over-week increase of $0.44/MWh or 0.4%. Even though the monthly price didn’t change much, there were extreme variances in daily prices this past week, with prices reaching as high as $185.18/MWh and $173.43/MWh on the 14th and 17th, respectively, and prices settling to as low as $54.70/MWh on July 19th. Hourly volatility was also present, with prices ranging from as low as $0.95/MWh on July 19th at 5am MST to as high as $648.80/MWh on July 17th at 9pm MST. Over the past week, we experienced intermittent outages at Genesee 2, continued outages at Battler River and a return to service for HR Milner.
In other news, residential and small commercial consumers will start seeing a provincial electricity rebate on their utility invoices this month. Starting July 1st, the government of Alberta will apply a $50 monthly credit to eligible consumer invoices for a 6-month term, for a total credit of $300 from July until December. Since the credit is applied to July consumption, it may not begin to appear on invoices until August. Eligible accounts are qualified with consumption of less than 250,000 kWh per year and must receive invoices directly through a utility or retailer.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst
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