Alberta Power Snapshot - June 2025
A month that was supposed to be “boring” was anything but - especially on June 17th, when the system came quite close to power outages. Time for our monthly Alberta Power Snapshot!
[This article is not financial or investment advice, but provided for general information purposes only. All information is subject to change and should not be relied upon for any decision making. See Webpage Terms of Use.]
The Data
As usual, let’s start by examining the hourly price heatmap for the Alberta power pool in June:
Heat Map of June 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 30th.
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)
For a month that typically experiences a high amount of excess supply due to power imports from BC during the freshet (snowmelt) and robust solar generation, the rather sporadic nature of zero-dollar hours (depicted in black) and the prevalence of high-price periods indicated unusual market dynamics. This "unusual dynamic" was primarily attributed to several gas-fired assets being offline for significant portions of the month (Cascade 1 & 2) or operating at reduced capacity (Suncor SCR1). This, in turn, critically reduced the amount of reserve capacity available for most of the month.
A pivotal moment occurred at 17:08 on June 17th, when two of Alberta’s largest gas-fired units, Genesee 1 & 2, unexpectedly tripped offline, removing 8.8% of the generation at that time. This event briefly depleted contingency reserves and sent the hourly pool price soaring to CAD 657.07/MWh. Alberta’s hydro dams responded rapidly, as did seven out of ten large-scale battery systems. Crucially, abundant solar generation, contributing over 1.1 GW to the grid, also played a vital role. However, virtually no real reserve capacity remained; for a short but critical period, every generating and storage asset was actively required to maintain grid functionality. A more detailed write-up of this highly interesting event has been published at Pipeline Online, and the upcoming quarterly MSA report should provide some highly interesting reading.
Back to the numbers. Despite the “streaks of red”, most of the month seems dominated by the grey “ultra cheap” price category, and even the days very high prices had many cheap, ultra-cheap, and even zero-dollar hours. What does this mean for the relevant averages?
June average electricity pool prices, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted
The average pool price for June reached CAD 46.75/MWh, approximately 50% higher than last year’s level, yet still significantly lower than the highs observed from 2021-23. Since 2005, June average prices have been lower only six times (even before accounting for inflation), indicating the overall price level remains 'reasonably low'. However, as in prior months, greater insight emerges when we examine the lowest-cost hours within each day.
Daily lowest-cost 8 hours, average for June, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted.
The average cost of the lowest-cost 8 hours per day was CAD 11.06/MWh, the second-lowest level since 2005. As the next graph will illustrate, this was notably not due to a new record number of zero-dollar hours, but rather to a significant volume of near-zero dollar hours observed throughout the month.
A quick re-cap on the important distinction between zero- and near-zero dollar hours: The Alberta pool currently has a price floor of CAD 0/MWh; whenever there is more supply than demand, prices cannot fall lower than zero. In most situations, a zero-dollar price is therefore synonymous with excess supply, meaning at least some amount of generation is being curtailed. Since there is almost always at least some capacity bid at CAD 0/MWh, a price even just slightly above this level implies that some flexible generation was required to meet demand beyond what inflexible sources (like wind, solar, or most Cogen) could provide at zero cost. There is thus a high potential for zero-dollar hours to become negatively priced if/when the price floor is lowered (currently anticipated for 2032 as part of the Restructured Energy Market, with a new price floor of minus CAD 100/MWh).
Returning to the numbers, below is the chart of zero-dollar hours for the month of June, compared to prior years since 2005:
Monthly zero-dollar hours for June, 2005-2025
Zero-dollar hours for June totaled 35, which was 4 hours fewer than in 2024, but still the highest since 2005.
Implications
What are the key takeaways from this data? Here is our take:
The trend toward lower average prices is set to continue, driven by the significant growth in gas-fired and renewable generation capacity.
At the same time, limited interconnection capacity to neighboring provinces and insufficient energy storage assets leave Alberta’s electricity grid vulnerable to unplanned generation interruptions.
A big upside exists for flexible loads that can be dispatched during the lowest-cost hours of each day, enabling them to significantly reduce operational costs.
Over the next few months, we will see how our grid and pool prices perform through the heat of summer.
Stay tuned!
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