Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for June is currently $136.64/MWh. Relative to last week’s price of $156.61/MWh, the month-to-date average price dropped $19.97/MWh or 12.8%, despite an uptick in hourly demand of 105MW or 1.2%. Helping to suppress pricing was significant solar generation and wind generation averaging over 70% of capacity. Late week generator outages at Battle River 4, Sheerness 2 and HR Milner did place some upward pressure on pricing. In addition, on the 13th, Path 2 (the intertie connecting Alberta and Saskatchewan) went offline and has yet to return to service.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 2.7¢/kWh so far for the month of June, representing a 0.4¢/kWh or 14.8% increase over last week’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. Natural gas-burning supply increased by 22.6% (671MW) over the course of this past week, while baseload generation such as nuclear and hydro both decreased, lowering their output to an average of 9,608MW (-0.0%) and 4,737MW (-1.3%), respectively. Solar increased output, climbing 9.9% or106MW, whereas wind and biofuel generation decreased supply (-5.3%; -880MW, and -6.0%; -11MW, respectively). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 8.3¢/kWh, June’s total market price is settling at 11.0¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Ryan Cosgrove, Energy Data Analyst
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