Alberta Power Snapshot - March & Q1 2025
Alberta’s power markets tend to be highly volatile in Q1, with cold weather driving up demand, dark days reducing solar power generation, and frigid temperatures impacting asset reliability. The start of 2025 brought its own set of market records, which we explore and compare to the previous 20 years. Since we already provided insights into the months of January and February, we will start with March before exploring the quarter as a whole.
Spoiler alert - we have another set of zero-dollar hour records, including one that is rather mind-boggling …
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March
As usual, let’s start with an overview of hourly price data in the form of a heat map. Compared to January or February, it doesn’t look like March Madness, but rather boring:
Heat Map of March 2025 hourly Alberta power pool prices.
Vertical axis: hour of the day, from hour 0 on top to hour 24 at the bottom.
Horizontal axis: day of the month, from 1st to 28th.
Colors: Hourly pool price, with each block representing one hour
black - “zero-dollar” (CAD 0/MWh);
grey - “ultra cheap” (CAD 0.01-30/MWh),
light green - “cheap” (CAD 30-50/MWh),
dark blue - “normal” (CAD 50-70/MWh),
yellow - “expensive” (CAD 70-100/MWh),
orange - “very expensive” (CAD 100-300/MWh)
red - “extremely expensive” (CAD 300-500/MWh)
maroon - “peak prices” (CAD 500-1,000/MWh)
We can see that prices were low throughout most of the month (and in case you are wondering why there is a white box, that’s the hour that doesn’t exist due to time change).
This resulted in a low average pool price of CAD 34.76/MWh. That’s low, but not quite in record territory, as a comparison to the prior years from 2005 shows:
March average electricity pool prices, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted
Since we are particularly interested in the opportunities for dispatchable loads, how about the lowest-cost daily 8 hours? Here, the March 2025 average was CAD 19.20/MWh, the 4th-lowest level since 2005:
Daily lowest-cost 8 hours, average for March, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted.
How about those zero-dollar hours? We set a new record for the month of March, 40% higher than last year’s record -though at 7 hours for the month it’s relatively low in absolute terms. But that’s for a month that historically didn’t see ANY such hours.
Monthly zero-dollar hours for March, 2005-2025
Now let’s zoom out a bit into Q1.
Q1
The average quarterly power pool price came in at CAD 39.78/MWh, the fifth lowest level since 2005.
Q1 average electricity pool prices, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted.
The average price of the lowest-cost 8 hours per day amounted to CAD 17.35/MWh, the second-lowest level since 2005 and 62% lower than last year’s CAD 46.81/MWh:
Daily lowest-cost 8 hours, average for Q1, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted.
And finally, the most interesting statistic: Q1 saw 149 (!) zero-dollar hours. To show what an extreme development this is, here is an overview of zero-dollar hours in Q1 from 2005 to 2025:
Quarterly zero-dollar hours, Q1 2005-2025
That’s right - there were 2 in 2015, then 5 in 2024, and now 149 in 2025. Wow!
Outlook
With such a start into the year, Q2 will be particularly interesting:
the BC freshet (snowmelt) will reduce our neighboring province’s ability to absorb excess power production,
seasonally rising solar output will increase the amount of non-dispatchable generation, and
Suncor’s new Cogen unit is expected to continue ramping up production.
At Arder Energy we expect around 1,000 zero-dollar hours for the year, since the change is structural, not cyclical.
If you are a large power consumer in Alberta, and you would like to get ahead of developments and explore opportunities and risk mitigations, please check out our Services or contact us - we have some ideas, and we are looking forward to working with you!