Regional Wholesale Markets: July 2012

The United States has many regional wholesale electricity markets. Below we look at monthly and annual ranges of on-peak, daily wholesale prices at selected pricing locations and daily peak demand for selected electricity systems in the Nation. The range of daily prices and demand data is shown for the report month and for the year ending with the report month.

Prices and demand are shown for six Regional Transmission Operator (RTO) markets: ISO New England (ISO-NE), New York ISO (NYISO), PJM Interconnection (PJM), Midwest ISO (MISO), Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and two locations in the California ISO (CAISO). Also shown are wholesale prices at trading hubs in Louisiana (into Entergy), Southwest (Palo Verde) and Northwest (Mid-Columbia). In addition to the RTO systems, peak demand is also shown for the Southern Company, Progress Florida, Tucson Electric, and the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA). Refer to the map tabs for the locations of the electricity and natural gas pricing hubs and the electric systems for which peak demand ranges are shown.

In the second tab immediately below, we show monthly and annual ranges of on-peak, daily wholesale natural gas prices at selected pricing locations in the United States. The range of daily natural gas prices is shown for the same month and year as the electricity price range chart. Wholesale electricity prices are closely tied to wholesale natural gas prices in all but the center of the country. Therefore, one can often explain current wholesale electricity prices by looking at what is happening with natural gas prices.

Wholesale Electricity Prices

Wholesale electricity prices remained below $46/MWh for most of the country, while hubs in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and New England stayed mostly between $40/MWh and $60/MWh. Notable exceptions to this were on July 17th and 18th at PJM, NYISO, MISO, where prices spiked well over $60 to a high of nearly $146/MWh for NYISO on the 18th. NYISE topped $81/MWh again on July 26, and ERCOT had a spike late in the month which raised prices there to $95/MWh on the 31st.

Natural gas prices remained at relatively low levels across much of the country as abundant supply kept prices around $3/MMBtu. The notable exception was at the Algonquin Hub in New England, where prices fluctuated all month and spiked to $6.41/MMBtu on July 17. Prices at all hubs averaged just over $3/MMBtu for the month of July. Prices at all hubs except Algonquin rose fairly steadily over the course of July, from an average of $2.78/MWh on July 1st to $3.13/MWh on July 31st.

Electricity System Daily Peak Demand

The monthly range of daily peak-hour demand as a percentage of all-time peak demand for July 2012 compared to the annual range varied a lot from region to region, though July saw some of the heaviest demand loads for the year so far at a number of hubs. ISONE, NYISO, PJM, MISO, Southern Company, ERCOT, and Tucson Electric all posted monthly-high peak loads above 90 percent of their systems' all-time peak demand during the month of July. Four of these monthly high demand loads (at ISONE, NYISO, PJM, and MISO) were also the highest levels all year. MISO (Midwest) led the group by getting to almost 100 MW of their all-time peak demand record on July 23rd.