Boxing Day Special: Alberta Had Free Power for Several Hours, and That’s Not a Good Thing
Published on December 28, 2023
Commentary Imagine, if you will, a Boxing Day sale where everything was free for everyone across every store at the same time, for several hours. And imagine if in early morning hours of Dec. 26, Best Buy, Staples, Walmart, and indeed every single store in the entire economy got paid precisely zero dollars for their wares for several hours that morning. Preposterous, you say! Indeed, it did happen, in Alberta’s free-wheeling unregulated electrical market. The pool price, as recorded by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) was $0.00 per megawatt between 4-7 a.m., and from 11 a.m. until noon. And as a pool price, that means unless there’s some other contract going, that’s the price all generators get paid....