Default power prices continue to rise for February, according to rates for the month that were released on Monday.
Medicine Hat utility customers will pay 8.315-cents per kilowatt hour, which would be the highest price to appear on bills since early 2014.
It sits three-10ths of a cent higher than January’s price, while the natural gas rate for local customers fell slightly to $2.2215 per gigajoule for residential and small- to medium-sized business users.
The local power price is determined as the average of other rates offered across the province, though increasingly, utility officials stress city customers can sign up for a set price of 6.8 cents.
That is based on production costs and return on investment at the publicly owned power plant.
The current default price is above the January price of 7.995-cents per kilowatt hour, and is the highest local price since October 2014.
After that point, an industrial slowdown in Alberta cut into demand which sunk power rates to abnormal lows. Retail prices were capped by the province from early 2018 through November 2019 at 6.8 cents. That amount appeared on bills with market price in Alberta’s deregulated power system rose above that. The difference was paid directly to utilities from carbon levy funds, but the practice was stopped in November by the province.
The market price for power has been higher than 8.3 cents in three months over that time, each time during the summer months.
Currently, the high and low power prices among four that set the average for February 2020 were 8.72-cents for Edmonton Epcor customers and 7.84-cents from Enmax.
The local gas price of $2.2215 per gigajoule is down from $2.267 in January. The two other regulated rates for gas in the province were $2.24 per gigajoule from Direct Energy and $2.20 from AltaGas.
