Alberta Energy Market Report — Week of August 13-19, 2026

Week in one line: Alberta’s wholesale power price firmed up, averaging $45.40/MWh for August 13–19 against $33.40/MWh the week before — a 36% jump, driven by warm afternoons and a run of tight evening hours rather than any single event. Retail rates are unchanged. Natural gas remains historically cheap.

Reporting week: August 13–19, 2026. Published August 20, 2026. Wholesale data from AESO; gas reference pricing from the Government of Alberta; retail rates from Get Energy’s live rate sheet.

Wholesale power: the week in numbers

Metric Aug 13–19 Aug 6–12 Change
Average pool price $45.40/MWh $33.40/MWh +36%
Median hour $30.41/MWh $22.53/MWh +35%
Highest hour $250.59/MWh (Aug 19, HE22) $509.15/MWh (Aug 6, HE23) —
Lowest hour $12.43/MWh $0.00/MWh —
Hours above $100/MWh 11 4 +7
Hours at or near zero 0 5 −5
Average Alberta internal load 10,140 MW 10,164 MW flat
Peak load 11,616 MW 11,103 MW +513 MW

The 30-day rolling average sits at $37.86/MWh for the period ending August 19.

What actually happened

The interesting number this week is not the average, it is the floor. Last week the market printed five hours at or near zero. This week it printed none, and the cheapest hour of the entire week was $12.43/MWh. That is a market with less surplus renewable output pressing on it — when wind runs hard through the overnight hours, Alberta’s price collapses; when it does not, the floor lifts and the weekly average follows.

Daily averages climbed steadily through the week: $34.77 on Thursday the 13th, $38.17 Saturday, $45.67 Monday, $50.75 Tuesday, and $66.70 on Wednesday the 19th. Peak load rose about 500 MW week over week to 11,616 MW, consistent with warm afternoons and evening air conditioning load stacking on top of the usual dinner-hour ramp. Every one of the week’s eleven hours above $100/MWh landed in the late afternoon and evening block.

For context on how tame this still is: the 30 days to August 19 included a single hour that settled at $967.02/MWh (July 22, HE21). Nothing this week came close. This was a firming market, not a stressed one.

Natural gas

Gas continues to be the quiet story of 2026. The Government of Alberta’s natural gas reference price has run $2.46/GJ in January, $1.95 in February, $1.69 in March, $1.28 in April, $1.16 in May and $1.37 in June — a soft first half by any historical standard, and well below the $2.71/GJ that closed out 2025.

Alberta gas is in the seasonal window where storage injection demand is the main support and there is little heating load to speak of. The relevant question for households is not August’s price but what the winter strip looks like when heating demand returns.

Where retail rates sit

Product Rate (Aug 20, 2026) Week over week
Electricity — variable (30-day avg) 5.31¢/kWh Unchanged
Electricity — variable (13-month avg) 5.78¢/kWh Unchanged
Electricity — 1-year fixed 6.57¢/kWh Unchanged
Electricity — 2-year fixed 7.97¢/kWh Unchanged
Electricity — 3-year fixed 8.87¢/kWh Unchanged
Natural gas — variable (30-day avg) $2.84/GJ Unchanged
Natural gas — 1-year fixed $3.77/GJ Unchanged
Rate of Last Resort (default) 12.01–12.06¢/kWh Fixed to Dec 31, 2026

The spread that matters: variable electricity is still below every fixed term on offer, and has been for most of the past year. The 13-month variable average of 5.78¢/kWh remains 0.79¢ under the one-year fixed rate of 6.57¢/kWh. Anyone still sitting on the default Rate of Last Resort is paying roughly double the competitive variable rate.

Regulatory and market news

  • Restructured Energy Market (REM). The REM ISO Rules were approved through Ministerial Order 035/2026, making the Restructured Energy Market ISO Rules Regulation (Alberta Regulation 51/2026), and the AESO published the rules on March 12, 2026. The AESO’s IT systems soft launch is planned for January through Q3 2027, with REM implementation beginning mid-2027. This changes how generation is dispatched and paid, not how households are billed — but it is already shaping how retailers price multi-year fixed contracts.
  • Rate of Last Resort. Unchanged at 12.01 to 12.06¢/kWh and fixed through December 31, 2026. Pricing for the period after that runs through the AUC process and is the regulatory item most worth watching this fall.
  • Generation queue. AESO published its August 2026 connection project list, with solar projects continuing to file needs identification documents. New intermittent capacity is the direct cause of the zero-price hours the market has been printing this summer.

What this means if your contract is up

Nothing this week changes the underlying picture. Wholesale prices firmed but stayed well inside a normal summer range, and the fundamentals holding Alberta prices down — large intermittent capacity, moderate demand, cheap gas — are all still in place.

If you can absorb a rough winter month, variable continues to be the cheaper bet on the record of the last 13 months. If a cold-snap bill would genuinely hurt, the one-year fixed premium of about 0.79¢/kWh is the honest price of that insurance, and it is not expensive by historical standards. The one position with nothing to recommend it is the default rate.

We publish this report every Monday. The detailed reasoning behind the fixed-or-variable call is in fixed vs variable electricity rates in Alberta, and current rates are always on our rates page.

Sources

This report is compiled from public market data and is provided for information, not as advice to buy or sell any energy product. Get Energy is a competitive retailer offering electricity and natural gas services for residential, small business, and farm consumers across Alberta. Get Energy is a tradename of Utility Network & Partners Inc.

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