Alberta Energy Market Report – Week of September 14-20, 2026

Week in one line: Alberta’s wholesale power price averaged $38.57/MWh for September 14 – 20 against $17.12/MWh the week before — up 125% — with a single Thursday evening hour at $715.78/MWh doing most of the damage. Get Energy’s variable electricity rate fell to 6.76¢/kWh as the late-August spike finally left its calculation window. Natural gas stays historically cheap.

Reporting week: September 14 – 20, 2026. Published September 21, 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	Sep 14–20	Sep 7–13	Change
Average pool price	$38.57/MWh	$17.12/MWh	+125%
Median hour	$24.46/MWh	$18.66/MWh	+31%
Highest hour	$715.78/MWh (Sep 17, HE20)	$47.38/MWh (Sep 10, HE22)	+$668.40
Lowest hour	$0.00/MWh	$0.00/MWh	—
Hours above $100/MWh	6	0	+6
Hours at or near zero	20	17	+3
Average Alberta internal load	9,734 MW	9,701 MW	+33 MW
Peak load	10,513 MW	10,740 MW	−227 MW

The 30-day rolling average for the period ending September 20 is $42.50/MWh, down from $45.24/MWh a week earlier. It keeps falling even though this week was dearer than last, because the three late-August days that averaged $164, $122 and $113/MWh are now dropping out of the window.

What actually happened

An average built out of a handful of hours. Daily averages: $13.94 Monday, $55.99 Tuesday, $28.18 Wednesday, $96.24 Thursday, $45.81 Friday, $16.56 Saturday and $13.27 Sunday. Monday, Saturday and Sunday all settled below $17/MWh, which is where the whole of last week sat. Thursday alone came in at more than five times the Monday figure.

Thursday September 17 is the week. Hour ending 20 — the evening ramp, after sunset and while households are still drawing — cleared at $715.78/MWh. Six hours across the week settled above $100/MWh, against none last week, and they are concentrated in Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Strip those hours out and the week looks like the previous one.

The floor did not move against us: 20 hours settled at or near zero, three more than last week. Wind was generous for long stretches. That is the shape Alberta produces regularly — plenty of near-free hours, a small number of very expensive ones, and an average that sits far above the median. This week the median hour was $24.46/MWh while the average was $38.57/MWh; the gap between those two numbers is the price of the evening ramp.

Demand was essentially flat week over week at 9,734 MW average, with peak load down 227 MW to 10,513 MW. Nothing in the load data explains the price move. It was a supply-side week: when the cheap marginal units are all running, prices sit in the teens, and when a few are not, the evening ramp prices in the hundreds.

Natural gas

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, $1.37 in June and $1.35 in July — July is the most recent month published, newly added since last week’s edition. The series remains well under the $2.71/GJ that closed 2025.

Injection season is ending and heating load is still effectively nil. Cheap gas is why the floor of the market is so low: gas-fired units set the marginal price in most hours, so inexpensive fuel plus full availability produces the $13 days seen at both ends of this week. For a household budget the number that matters is the winter strip, not the September print.

Where retail rates sit

Product	Rate (Sep 21, 2026)	Week over week
Electricity — variable (30-day avg, calculated Sep 14)	6.76¢/kWh	−0.30¢
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 — 30-day discount moving average (calculated Sep 7, includes transaction fee)	$3.61/GJ	−$0.10
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 variable electricity rate fell 0.30¢ to 6.76¢/kWh. It is a trailing 30-day average calculated as of September 14, so what came out of the window was the tail of the expensive late-August stretch; what went in was the cheap first half of September. This week’s $715 hour is not in that number yet and will not be until the next calculations.

Fixed electricity rates did not move. Variable now sits 0.19¢ above the one-year fixed rate of 6.57¢/kWh, having been 0.49¢ above it last week. The gas 30-day discount moving average fell another 10 cents to $3.61/GJ, 16 cents below the $3.77/GJ one-year fixed gas rate — on gas, the floating product is still the cheaper of the two. The default Rate of Last Resort remains 12.01 to 12.06¢/kWh, about 35% above our three-year fixed rate and roughly 78% above our current variable rate, and it does not move with the pool price at all.

Forward market and load growth

TC Energy’s Alberta power market update, indicative as of August 4, 2026, put the 2027 flat (7×24) forward at $45.02/MWh, 2028 at $64.29/MWh and 2029 at $80.39/MWh, with AECO gas forwards of $2.17, $2.53 and $2.55/GJ across the same years. No September edition of that update had been published as of this morning, so these remain the most recent figures we can cite. Read the curve for what it is: the price at which a term deal can be struck today, not a forecast of what the pool will settle at.

The shape of it is the part worth noting. The near years are priced close to where the market has actually been trading this year, while 2028 and 2029 are priced materially higher — the period in which large industrial and data-centre load is expected to start drawing in volume. Alberta’s weather-corrected load has been growing a few hundred megawatts a year before any of that connects, and the AESO’s large-load connection queue is many times the size of its initial connection cap.

Regulatory and market news

• AESO held its REM implementation and market readiness session on September 17. The session covered scope, approach and schedule for market-participant readiness ahead of the Restructured Energy Market, and the AESO has posted the presentation and recording on its engagement site. The REM ISO Rules were approved by regulation in March 2026 and participant system work continues. Nothing in the transition changes residential rates today.
• Feedback closed September 19 on connection requirements for transmission-connected data centres. The AESO’s engagement page lists September 19 as the stakeholder feedback deadline for the technical requirements data centres must meet to connect to the transmission system, with a consolidated response to follow. The requirements themselves are on the grid side, but they determine how quickly large loads can connect — and therefore when new demand starts competing with households for the same supply.
• Rate of Last Resort. Unchanged at 12.01 to 12.06¢/kWh and fixed through December 31, 2026. Rates for the January 1, 2027 to December 31, 2028 term are set under the providers’ approved energy price setting plans and must be filed at least 30 days before January 1, 2027. That filing is still the item to watch this fall. The natural gas default, the Default Rate Tariff, continues to be approved monthly by the AUC and is separate from the electricity default.
• No new AUC decision affecting residential rates was issued this week beyond routine proceedings. The Commission’s August rejection of the 1,400 MW gas plant proposed for a co-located data centre at Olds (Decision 30732-D01-2026) remains the most recent decision with consumer relevance, and the AUC has said it does not set a precedent for other applications.

What this means if your contract is up

This week is a clean illustration of why one week’s wholesale average is a poor guide to a household bill. Six hours out of 168 more than doubled the weekly average, while the variable retail rate — averaging a completely different 30-day window — went down. The two numbers moved in opposite directions in the same seven days, and both were correct.

The arithmetic as it stands: variable at 6.76¢/kWh, one-year fixed at 6.57¢/kWh, two-year fixed at 7.97¢/kWh, three-year fixed at 8.87¢/kWh. The one-year fixed rate is currently below the trailing variable average, which is unusual; the gap is small enough either way that the real question is how much month-to-month movement you want on the bill rather than which is cheaper today. On gas the position is reversed: the floating rate at $3.61/GJ sits below the $3.77/GJ fixed rate.

The one position that is hard to justify on any of these numbers is the default Rate of Last Resort at 12.01 to 12.06¢/kWh, which is close to double our variable and one-year fixed rates and well above every other option in the table, and is set by regulation rather than by the market.

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

Sources

• AESO market and system reporting — hourly pool price and Alberta internal load, August 22 – September 20, 2026. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
• Government of Alberta — Alberta natural gas reference price — monthly $/GJ series through July 2026. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
• TC Energy — Alberta power market update — forward price table indicative as of August 4, 2026. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
• AESO Engage — REM market participant readiness — September 17, 2026 stakeholder session materials. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
• AESO Engage — connection requirements for transmission-connected data centres — engagement timeline, feedback due September 19. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
• Utilities Consumer Advocate — default rates — Rate of Last Resort 12.01–12.06¢/kWh to December 31, 2026; Default Rate Tariff approved monthly. Retrieved September 21, 2026.

Get Energy is a competitive retailer in Alberta, a tradename of Utility Network & Partners Inc.