Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Wind turbines in southern Alberta. Photo by Clive Schaupmeyer
Once again low renewable power generation output has resulted in high electricity spot prices in Alberta, which has an unregulated electricity market.
The pool price for electricity hit the stratosphere the evening of Oct. 29 just as wind output collapsed to one quarter of one per cent capacity.
According to data published by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), as recorded by X account @ReliableAB, wind output was minimal throughout the day.
At 8:59 a.m. total wind output was 167 megawatts out of a capacity of 5,684. At that moment, the pool price was $556.65 per megawatt-hour. The province was importing 494 megawatts at the time, including 49 from Saskatchewan. Notably, 70 megawatts were coming from the province’s 11 grid-scale batteries, with a total capacity of 270 megawatts. Solar was minimal, at 3.1 per cent, or 58 out of 1,892 megawatts capacity.
AESO pool price at 9 a.m., Oct. 29, 2026. AESO
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That morning peak for price slacked off for five hours of midday, but wind output kept falling. Solar, which on a good day can reach 90 per cent or even more of capacity, was floating at less than a quarter capacity output when it peaked at 1:59 p.m. At that moment solar was 440 out of 1,892 megawatts, or 23.3 per cent. Wind was running at 1.9 per cent, or 109 megawatts.
Come late afternoon, prices spiked, going to $477.20 at 4 p.m., then $655.24, $837.10 at 6 p.m., $829.35, $807.54and $695.98 at 9 p.m. before dropping to much lower prices.
Correspondingly, wind output was 90 megawatts at 4 p.m., then 67, 68, 45, and 13 at 8 pm. That was 0.2 per cent capacity and a low for the day. At 9 p.m. it was 44 megawatts before beginning a very slow rise in output.
AESO pool price at 6 p.m. Oct. 29, 2026 AESO
During this time, SaskPower was making bank, selling 100 megawatts of high-priced power to Alberta. This is a common trend. When Alberta has surplus power, almost always related to high wind output (if you consider more than 50 per cent output to be “high”), it literally gives it away to its neighbours for zero dollars per megawatt, also known as “free.” But when wind in particular bottoms out, prices soar, as they did twice during Oct. 29. Then Alberta buys high-priced power from SaskPower, BC Hydro and Montana. In this case, six hours were $477 or more per megawatt-hour, and three of those hours saw the price over $800 per megawatt-hour.
Right now there’s only one intertie between Alberta and Saskatchewan, and because the two provinces are on opposite sides of an interconnect border, any power transferred between them must be phase-shifted. The two interconnects are out of phase with each other. There’s only one facility that is capable of doing that, McNeill Station, and its capacity is only 150 megawatts. It has also had frequent and often-long term outages. But the federal energy strategy announced in June anticipates upgrades to the intertie between the provinces, and an increase of capacity of 250 megawatts to a total of 400.
If that occurs, there may be times when Saskatchewan is able to sell a lot more power into the Alberta grid and take advantage of these moments of sky-high pricing to a greater extent.
And more significantly, if Saskatchewan builds two large-scale reactors near Lloydminster, that will likely lead to even more expansion of the intertie capacity, including another site closer to Lloydminster.
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