Alberta’s weighted average Power Pool Price for March is currently $197.74/MWh, a marginal increase of $6.22/MWh or 3.2% relative to last week’s price of $191.52/MWh. Daily settles over the past week have been elevated, with an average weekly price of $211.57/MWh and a lowest daily settle of $119.13/MWh on March 16th. On the 21st, the daily price settled to $332.35/MWh, which ranks as the 3rd highest daily settle so far in 2023. Price spikes over the past week can primarily be attributed to minimal levels of renewable generation, increasing the usage of natural gas generators. There were several days over the past week where renewable generation was only able to produce 5-10% of it’s maximum capacity. Generator outages have not had major impacts on pricing, as only Sheerness 1 has been offline since the 17th.
The weighted average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is settling at 2.4¢/kWh so far for the month of March, representing a 0.2¢/kWh or 8.2% decrease over last week’s settle. The primary driver of this price decline is the decrease in demand across the province, causing the grid’s need for demand response to diminish. Natural gas-burning generation declined by 17.1% (1324MW) over the course of this past week. Nuclear and hydro baseload generation both fell this past week, lowering their output to an average of 8316MW (-0.4%) and 4270MW (-2.4%), respectively. Wind and solar increased week-over-week output (+25.6%; 2054MW, +1.8%; 83MW, respectively), whereas biofuel decreased (-9.0%, -42MW). With the first Global Adjustment estimated at 7.0¢/kWh, March’s total market price is settling at 9.4¢/kWh as of today.
– Mark Ljuckanov, Energy Advisor / Clara Birch, Energy Data Analyst
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