Alberta Power Market Snapshot: Q3 2025
Expanding on our summary of Alberta's power market in September, let's briefly examine Q3 2025 for a higher-level look at its defining trends.
[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. Copyright Arder Energy™ 2025. See Webpage Terms of Use.]
The Data
Let's again start with the clearest evidence of the structural shift underway in the Alberta power market: the stunning, record-setting growth of zero-dollar hours. If you want one chart that definitively separates the current energy landscape from the last two decades, this is it. It signals that the fundamental dynamics of generation and supply are no longer what they used to be.
By the end of September, cumulative zero-dollar hours this year reached 552, already exceeding last year’s total of 376, which itself was an all-time record. During these periods, not only did generators receive no revenue, but we also observed record amounts of curtailed generation. The Market Surveillance Administrator will publish Q3 curtailment statistics in November, having reported total Constrained Intermittent Generation (CIG) of 310,000 MWh for Q2, almost entirely from wind and solar assets. As we can see from the below chart, Q2 by itself did not quite set a record; at 154 zero-dollar hours, it was slightly below 2024’s 159. Still, it represented 7.1% of all hours:
Q3 zero-dollar hours by year, 2005-2025
What made 2025 different from 2024? Mainly the large amounts of gas-fired generation that were taken offline for maintenance and commercial reasons. Conventional generator outages also contributed to an emergency grid alert on September 8th, when “things got tight” in the market - looking forward to a more detailed description in the MSA Q3 report.
As for average hourly prices, these settled at CAD 52.29/MWh in Q3, marking a rather “average” quarter. This represents a return to normalcy after the 2021-23 price spikes, albeit on the lower end:
Q3 average electricity pool prices by year, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted
The average cost for the daily lowest-priced 8 hours came in at CAD 10.81/MWh, marking the lowest level in the last two decades - despite no inflation adjustment. It is worth stressing this point - while average prices were “average”, the average price of the lowest cost hours was at a record low level. A clear sign that averages tell only part of the story. And we also highlight this metric as it serves as a strong proxy for opportunities available to flexible loads with low capacity factors, including thermal storage units and certain electric boiler configurations:
Daily lowest-cost 8 hours, Q3 average by year, 2005-2025 (CAD/MWh)
Prices are not inflation-adjusted.
The Takeaways
Again we see clear trends: the accelerating rise of temporary excess supply, curtailments, and zero-dollar hours. This creates significant opportunities for storage and flexible loads, while presenting growing challenges for inflexible generation and load. But this is not the only thing that is shifting: large amounts of new loads - especially those headline-grabbing data centers - are bound to come online in the near future. And on top of that, Alberta will see the largest regulatory change in the power market since the completion of deregulation in 2001.
The “good old days” of set-and-forget power procurement are definitely over, at least for those power consumers that want to stay competitive - it literally pays to be proactive.
Training Opportunity
Want to learn more? Our Alberta Power Fundamentals training, scheduled for January 29th, will equip you with the essential market understanding and strategies required to ensure your business remains competitive and resilient. We are expecting a sold-out event again, thus don’t delay signing up, we look forward to having you on board!
