Calgary Power Trading

For those with experience in power trading within Canada would you mind sharing: 1) What are the top firms to trade power in BC, AB, ON? 2) What are the best hubs to trade at a Canadian firm? What are the major differences in trading the major hubs (that Canadian firms trade)? 3) What do you think will happen to AESO trading opportunities under the proposed capacity market?

6 Comments
 
Best Response

Powerex, Morgan Stanley (Van), TransAlta - best at doing AB-MidC-Cali-Desert

TransAlta has a decent East/Ont desk and prob has the best AB desk. Rumor has it their PJM traders blew up this winter.

Powerex is the MidC-Cali king. Best assets in the west. Hydro, hydro, and some more hydro!

  1. Best hub really depends where you get a seat. I would never want to trade PJM at powerex but at TA you may be impartial to West vs East. Morgan's Canadian office only trades west power. East is traded out of NYC

RBC by the looks had the best Ontatio desk, but heard they got destroyed trading Mass hub this winter and promptly fired all their guys (to my understanding - could be wrong)

Bruce, OPG seem like dumb money in the market. Dont know anything HQ, but the frenchies are weird

  1. No fucking clue
 

AB Power is dominated by the generators. TransAlta has the largest portfolio since the PPA terminations April 1st. Both TransAlta and Capital Power have pretty high risk tolerances. Enmax and ATCO have large portfolios but generally less appetite for risk. Outside the gens you've got maybe 15-20 small volume guys, importers/exporters (MS, Powerex, Northpoint), small gens/loads/retailers etc (TransCanada, Direct, Just, Maxim, Excelon, Algonquin, Altagas, Shell) and a handful of pure specs scattered at random shops.

TransAlta has the largest and most geographically diverse portfolio of anyone in Calgary They trade almost every market. Dynasty has a pretty big operation for a spec shop. They don't touch AB power though. TransAlta, Capital Power and TransCanada all have Ontario assets, not really sure on their relative sophistication and activity in Ontario trading is, many of those assets are heavily contracted with limited merchant exposure.

AESO and IESO are the only Canadian markets and both are pretty unique markets. Trading them is all about nuance and understanding how those markets function.

Capacity Market impact is all TBD. Capacity is unlikely going to be tradeable so it'll all depend on how onerous energy market mitigation is going to be and how much of an energy market is left once it all shakes out or if everyone is constrained to offering in all their assets at marginal cost.

 

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