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.
Please email any questions that you would like Power Advisory to discuss at the webinar to byauch@poweradvisoryllc.com
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. Compared to last week’s review, there were no negative day-ahead or real-time priced hours. Often, the real-time Ontario price is moving from well below the day-ahead price to spikes significantly above it. Notably, the last two days of the week showed greater convergence between day-ahead and real-time prices. Most of the largest price spikes in real-time occurred in the late afternoon (5 PM) to late evening hours – where both demand and solar or wind generation can change quickly.
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 $15.32/MW, while it was more than $17.61/MW in real-time. Notably, a high OR price spike occurred for day-ahead in the morning hour.
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. In particular, day-ahead OR prices more closely tracked energy prices (and historical patterns) except for the OR price spike noted above.
Real-time OR prices were low for several hours of the week with OR prices exhibiting less volatility compared to energy prices.
Zonal Prices and Congestion
The Northeast and Northwest zones continue to experience the highest levels of congestion. Both zones experienced positive and negative congestion. Congestion in Niagara is very minimal (at most -$1.99/MWh) and was excluded from the graph below. Congestion in the Northwest was particularly extreme in the first half of the week.
Real-time zonal prices in the Northwest remain volatile, but largely has negative congestion – with congestion moving below -$200/MWh.
And in real-time, the West zone saw minor congestion for a brief period, with negative congestion in the Northeast zone (below).
