MRP Week 5 Review: Extreme Negative Price in RT and Congestion in Niagara Zone

June 10, 2025
By 
Brady Yauch & Brendan Callery & Tyama Lyall

Power Advisory is moving forward with its weekly renewed market reviews based on feedback from a number of clients. The weekly timeframe has slightly adjusted and is now from Saturday to Sunday. This report adds a few days to cover a few days included in the transition from the previous weekly schedule to the new format (note that the old weekly schedule was based on MRP launching on a Thursday and went from Thursday to Wednesday).

Power Advisory Webinar: Inside the first six weeks of MRP.

Power Advisory will be hosting a one-hour webinar to discuss the first six weeks of the renewed market. The webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 18th at 2:00 PM (ET). Please register here.

Day-Ahead and Real-Time Prices

Real-time prices continue to exhibit much greater volatility than day-ahead prices. There were four real-time Ontario Zonal Price (OZP) spikes greater than $200/MWh. Interestingly, there was one hour where the real-time OZP settled at -$47/MWh, with multiple intervals hitting, but not exceeding, the settlement floor of -$100/MWh. Note that there is a settlement floor of -$100/MWh, but the market price floor remains -$2,000/MWh. The real-time Ontario price is frequently moving from well below the day-ahead price to large price spikes during hours when demand is changing quickly – typically during the morning or afternoon peak hours.

OR Prices

Both real-time and day-ahead Operating Reserve (OR) prices remain higher compared to historical averages. The average weekly day-ahead 10S price was $12/MW, while it was more than $18.50/MW in real-time.

Both the day-ahead and real-time OR prices began to more closely follow historical patterns – with the OR price being on average below the energy price. Day-ahead OR prices, in particular, more closely tracked energy prices (and historical patterns).

Real-time OR prices, meanwhile, continued to exhibit more volatility compared to energy prices.

Zonal Prices and Congestion

While the Northeast and Northwest zones continue to experience the highest levels of congestion, the Niagara zone also saw congestion in both the day-ahead and real-time markets.

Real-time zonal prices in the Northwest remain volatile – swinging from positive to negative congestion (sometimes in the same day).

And in real-time, the West zone saw minor congestion, with negative congestion in both the Niagara and Northeast zones. The Niagara zone also experienced positive congestion for a brief period.