Alberta EnergyPublished 13 September 2026 · Archived editionCurrent version →

Alberta electricity

Alberta's electricity price index follows the default rate, which fewer than one in five residential customers now pay

Updated 2 November 2026, with Statistics Canada data retrieved the same day. The version published on 13 September 2026 is archived as it was published.

Statistics Canada publishes a monthly price index for electricity in Alberta. It is a component of the provincial consumer price index, so it feeds the inflation figures and most of what gets said about the cost of keeping the lights on. Alberta households do not share one electricity price, so the index has to be following some of them.

Against 130 monthly energy charges published by the utilities themselves, month-over-month changes in the index correlate at 0.938 in one service territory and 0.955 in another. The index moves about 0.50% for each 1% the rate moves, more than an index made up mostly of fixed contracts could. Since January 2025, when the default rate was fixed for two years, the index has stayed nearly still and risen 3.7% to June 2026, while fixed-contract offers sat near 9¢, about half their 2023 level.

The default rate covered 31.5% of Alberta's residential sites averaged across 2023 and 18.4% in June 2026, on the market regulator's count. A site is a meter: an apartment building behind one meter is one site. The rest are on , fixed or floating.

That reading is a working hypothesis, and the tests section sets out what would break it. Two arguments the September version leaned on do not hold. The price ceiling of January 2023 rules out fixed contracts but not floating plans, because floating rates fell that month too. And the 2025 break does not single out the regulated rate: leave out its first month and a non-residential index went just as flat. The next scheduled check is the January 2027 index, due in mid-February 2027, after the next two-year rate takes effect. Statistics Canada states nothing either way about which prices the index samples.

1978–2026 · the series

The index swung harder than a utility price, then went nearly still

In August 2023 the index reached 372.9, its highest reading since publication began in September 1978. Seven months before that, in January 2023, it had fallen 45.6% in a single month, the largest one-month decline in the series. In September 2026 it stood at 216.0. The is set to 100 in 2002; it measures how far something moved, never what anything costs.

For most of its life it climbed slowly, with occasional steps. From 2021 it swung by tens of per cent a month. From January 2025 it went nearly flat, though not completely: it rose 3.6% in June 2025 and 1.2% in January 2026, months in which the regulated energy charge did not move. It went from 209.5 in January 2025 to 216.0 in September 2026.

How much it has risen depends on the measure, by more than a factor of two. Against its 2019 , the 2025 mean is ×1.45. The highest annual mean, in 2023, is ×1.69. Only the single month of August 2023 reaches ×2.53. “Roughly doubled” is true of one month and of no year; the comparisons on this page use annual means.

Plain words · What an index is, and what this one is used for

A price index answers one question: how much has a price moved since a chosen base period. This one is set to 100 in 2002. A reading of 200 means prices have doubled since 2002 — it does not mean twenty cents, or two hundred dollars, or anything at all in money.

This particular index matters beyond its own chart. Electricity is a component of the Alberta consumer price index, so this series feeds the province's headline inflation rate, and through it the arguments people make about the cost of living. When Albertans argue about what has happened to power prices, this is usually the number underneath the argument, whether or not anyone names it.

Alberta households do not share one electricity price, so the index follows some of them. Statistics Canada does not say publicly which. This page tests it against published rates.

The index swung through 2021–24 and has barely moved since January 2025

Consumer price index for electricity, Alberta · index, 2002 = 100 · monthly, 1978–September 2026 · not seasonally adjusted

Look at the two marked months: the January 2023 , which applied only to regulated-rate customers, and January 2025, when the regulated rate stopped being reset monthly. Both are dates in policy.

Nothing here is a wholesale price. Alberta's hourly is published by the Alberta Electric System Operator under a licence permitting internal and non-commercial use only, and no pool figure appears on this page. Every price shown is retail.

The question

An index of electricity prices has to be someone's electricity price

Alberta deregulated electricity retailing, so a household's price depends on what it signed. On a fixed the rate holds until renewal. On a floating contract it moves with the market each month. A household that signs nothing is on the , which until the end of 2024 was recalculated every month and since then has been fixed for two years at a time.

Those populations do not share one price, or even one kind of price. A single index for “electricity, Alberta” follows some mix of them, and the mix decides what the inflation figure describes.

The Market Surveillance Administrator publishes the default-rate share monthly from January 2012. It counts active residential sites, and its notes say a site corresponds to a meter: an apartment building behind one meter is one site, a second property is a second one.

·58.1% of residential sites on the regulated rate (March 2014) — Market Surveillance Administrator, Retail Statistics (Data Portal). source
·Calgary 42%, Edmonton 72%; “nearly 60%” province-wide and “persistently declining” (March 2014, published that November) — Market Surveillance Administrator, State of the Market 2014. source
·45.0% of sites; averaged across 2021, 43.6% (January 2021) — Market Surveillance Administrator, Retail Statistics (Data Portal). source
·37.4% of sites, and 34.9% of residential consumption, a different measure that travelled widely as “35%” (September 2022) — Market Surveillance Administrator, Retail Statistics (Data Portal). source
·31.5% of sites averaged across the year, falling from 35.7% in January to 26.4% by December (2023) — Market Surveillance Administrator, Retail Statistics (Data Portal). source
·21.6% of sites averaged across the year, now on the Rate of Last Resort; 23.7% in January, 19.8% in December (2025) — Market Surveillance Administrator, Retail Statistics (Data Portal). source
·18.4% of sites, 317,002 of about 1,726,000; 19.0% averaged January to June (June 2026, the latest month published) — Market Surveillance Administrator, Retail Statistics (Data Portal). source

A clear majority in 2014, a third across 2023, a fifth across 2025, 18.4% by June 2026. Two figures that circulate do not match the regulator's series. A 2025 share of about 26%: no month of 2025 comes near it, and the nearest 26.4% reading is December 2023. And “35% of households”, which is the September 2022 consumption share, a share of energy volume, relabelled as a headcount. A 2021 figure of about 45% does match: it is the January 2021 reading.

The MSA's Excel workbook stops updating and is removed after early January 2027, per its notice of 5 October 2026; the same series is on the MSA Data Portal, which the list links. The MSA revised June 2022 to September 2025 on 9 April 2026, and the shares above are from the revised series.

Plain words · The default rate, and the shrinking group of people on it

Alberta deregulated electricity retailing, but a household that signs nothing has to be charged something. That something is the Regulated Rate Option: a default rate, set by the incumbent utility in each service territory under rules approved by the Alberta Utilities Commission, and until the end of 2024 recalculated every single month against forward market prices.

That monthly reset is the source of its volatility. A competitive fixed contract holds one rate for a term of a year or more; the regulated rate was repriced twelve times a year, so it passed the market's swings straight through to whoever had not opted out.

The share of Alberta's residential customers on it has fallen a long way over the period this page covers. On the Market Surveillance Administrator's retail statistics, which count residential sites (a site is a meter, not a household), it went from 58 per cent in March 2014 to an average of 31.5 per cent across 2023, a year that itself slid from about 36 per cent in January to 26 per cent by December, then to about a fifth across 2025 and 18.4 per cent in June 2026. A share that fell nine points inside one year has no single figure, so the page gives each share with its date.

Since 1 January 2025 the default has been the Rate of Last Resort, set for two years at a time rather than monthly.

2018–2024 · the test

Checked against the published rates, the index moves with the default rate

If the index tracks the regulated rate, month-to-month changes in the two should agree. If it tracks a broad mix of households mostly on fixed contracts, they should not, because most of that population's price does not change in a given month.

The rates come from the utilities that published them: 75 months of Direct Energy Regulated Services in the ATCO Electric service area, continuous from October 2018, and 55 months of ENMAX in Calgary, continuous from December 2021 to November 2024, with older figures from individual news releases. Each is the alone, with no distribution, transmission, riders, administration or tax, read from 12 documents listed in the method section.

An index and a price in cents share no scale, so the comparison is between . On the 62 clean months in the Direct Energy Regulated Services territory the is 0.938. On the 23 clean months in Calgary, a different utility and an independently sourced series, it is 0.955. The index moved in the same direction as the rate in 51 of 62 months in one territory and 22 of 23 in the other.

Plain words · Why this page compares changes and never levels

The three index series here carry two different base years: the consumer price index for electricity is 2002 = 100, and the two electric power selling price indexes are 2014 = 100. Drawing them on one axis would compare a series normalised in one year against two normalised in another, and the point where the lines crossed would mean nothing whatsoever.

The regulated rate is a third kind of thing again — an actual price in cents, not an index at all. It cannot share an axis with any of them as a level.

So every comparison on this page is a rate of change, or else both series are rebased to a common month and the page says so in the caption. That is not a stylistic preference; it is the only arithmetic that is defined across these series.

Two utilities, two service territories, one line

Month-over-month % change in the CPI electricity index against the same month's change in the published regulated energy charge · 62 and 23 clean months · dashed line is the fitted slope, 0.50

Look at the grey triangles away from the line: the 24 months touching July 2022–May 2023, when a provincial , a price ceiling or both changed what consumers paid without changing the rate. With them included the correlations are 0.638 and 0.622.

The relationship breaks down where a known third variable was moving and holds everywhere else, which is what an index pricing the regulated rate as it reached the customer would show. Since January 2025 the rate has been one number, so the lines below carry it forward as a flat segment of its own.

The index followed the monthly rate for six years, then held nearly flat, like the two-year rate

CPI electricity and the Direct Energy Regulated Services energy charge · both rebased so October 2018 = 100 · shaded band is the rebate and ceiling window · dashed segment is the Rate of Last Resort

Look at January 2025, where the rate rose 1.5% and the index fell 3.9%, and at the index's steps of 3.6% in June 2025 and 1.2% in January 2026 against the flat dashed rate. Both series are divided by their own October 2018 value, so the gap between the lines carries no meaning; their shape does.

The slope

A correlation cannot say whose price it is. The slope rules out fixed contracts

Could a floating competitive plan produce the same correlation? Yes. A floating plan reprices with the market each month, so an index covering everyone would still move with the regulated rate. The question splits in two: how much of the index's weight sits on prices that move in a given month, which the slope answers, and whose prices those are, which it does not.

Statistics Canada's for non-residential customers under 5000 kW shows the limit. Its customers are predominantly on competitive terms, not all: commercial sites using under 250 MWh a year can take the default rate, and 22.1% of commercial sites were on it in June 2026 (34.5% in January 2023). Whether the index samples them is not published. Fitted on the same 62 clean months, it tracks the household index at 0.958, higher than the regulated rate does. Every Alberta electricity price reprices off the same market, so a tight correlation shows only that the index follows something that moves monthly.

The slopes differ: the household index moves 0.70 for each point that index moves, against 0.50 for the regulated rate. The gap does not separate them. A fitted slope is co-movement times relative size, and the regulated rate is an energy charge with no wires or fees diluting it, so it swings further each month than an all-in selling price index. If the household index tracks the regulated rate, its slope on the non-residential index is forced to about 0.72 by that difference alone. The observed value is 0.70.

The against the regulated rate is what does the work. Across both territories it is about 0.50: half a per cent in the index for each per cent in the energy charge. That number is a product of two things: the share of the index's weight on prices that reprice monthly, and the energy charge's share of a bill, since wires and fees did not move. Fix the slope at what was measured, and each assumption about the first implies a value for the second.

If the index's weight is…	weight repricing monthly	implied energy share of a bill	Verdict
Essentially all of the index's weight is on the regulated rate	1.00	0.50	Plausible — about how Alberta bills divide
The index covers all residential customers, and only the roughly 37% on the regulated rate see a price move in a given month — the competitive majority sits on fixed contracts	0.37	1.34	Impossible — energy cannot be 134% of a bill
The index covers all residential customers, and the competitive majority is on floating plans that reprice monthly with the market	1.00	0.50	Survives the slope; not tested on this page

The middle row fails. An index covering every residential customer, with the competitive majority's prices still between renewals, would move about 0.18% for each 1% in the regulated rate, not 0.50%. The 37% in that row is the September 2022 share; the 2018–24 window averaged about 40%, which changes nothing. The bottom row survives: on the slope alone, the regulated rate and floating plans look the same, because both repriced monthly off the same market until the end of 2024.

The energy share the table turns on comes from the regression, not from a published tariff breakdown; none has been found. The slope bounds how much of the index can sit on prices that hold still. It does not give an exact share.

2025-01 · the rate stops moving

Since the rate froze, the index has not done what fixed contracts did

On 1 January 2025 the regulated rate and floating plans parted. The monthly-reset Regulated Rate Option was replaced by a , set for two years:

“An owner must set each Rate of Last Resort for a term of 2 years (a) for the first 2-year term, beginning on January 1, 2025 and ending on December 31, 2026, and (b) for each subsequent 2-year term, beginning on January 1 of the year following the end of the previous term.”
Rate of Last Resort Regulation, Alberta Regulation 262/2005, s.10(1) · text

The published rate has been flat since: 12.01¢ per kilowatt hour in the Edmonton and Fortis territories and 12.02¢ in the ATCO Electric service area, every month through October 2026.

The index calmed with it. Through 36 months of monthly resets from 2022 its monthly changes had a standard deviation of 16.46%. Over the 20 months from January 2025 it is 1.31%, a 12.5-fold drop. The under-5000 kW index dropped 2.8-fold over the same windows.

That contrast rests on one month. The control rose 23.5% in January 2025 itself, as it does most Januaries. Start the window in February 2025 and the household index's drop is 16.7-fold and the control's is 14.4-fold. Both went flat.

Both indexes went flat after January 2025

Month-over-month % change, Alberta · CPI electricity and the under-5000 kW selling price index · 2018–September 2026 · same scale in both panels · January 2025 in coral

CPI electricity, households

Electric power selling price index, under 5000 kW (non-residential)

Look at the coral bar in the lower panel. Counting it, the household index calmed 12.5-fold and the control 2.8-fold; without it, 16.7-fold and 14.4-fold.

The calm alone does not say whose price the index carries. One check on the 2025–26 record separates the regulated rate from the stock of fixed contracts, because from January 2025 the two would move differently.

A fixed contract holds the price signed at renewal, and renewals since 2025 have been signed far lower than in 2023. One-year fixed offers averaged 16.8¢ through 2023 and between 8.75¢ and 9.27¢ from January 2025 to June 2026, computed from Utilities Consumer Advocate offers on the MSA Data Portal. An index following the stock of fixed contracts would have drifted down as older contracts renewed; trailing averages of those offers fell 10.8% to 23.3% over that span. The index rose 3.7%.

Offers are not prices paid, so the fixed-contract check is a rough proxy. The index's own rises since January 2025, 3.6% in June 2025 and 1.2% in January 2026, came in months the energy charge did not move. Wires and riders change on their own schedules and are the candidates; the cause is not established.

An older check points the same way, weakly. In 8 months of the Direct Energy Regulated Services series the energy charge printed the same figure two months running. The index moved an average of 0.8% in those months, against 8.2% in the other 66, a 9.8-fold damping. The market was quiet in those months too: the under-5000 kW index moved 1.6%.

One month does not fit. Into January 2025 the Direct Energy Regulated Services energy charge rose 1.5%, from 11.842¢ to 12.02¢, and the index fell 3.9%, after rising 3.7% in December 2024. The other territories' December rates are not on file, so the month is unresolved.

2023-01 · an intervention with a known scope

The ceiling month rules out fixed contracts, but not floating plans

In the winter of 2022–23 Alberta did two things to electricity bills. The rebate went to everybody:

“the $50 rebates will be on all eligible bills – protecting consumers on the variable regulated rate option as well as those on competitive contracts.”
Government of Alberta news release, 2022-07-06 · release

The price ceiling did not:

“Consumers who purchase power through the regulated rate option (RRO) will benefit from temporary price relief through a 13.5 cent per kilowatt hour ceiling in January, February and March 2023.”
Government of Alberta news release, 2022-12-07 · release

Into January 2023 the Direct Energy Regulated Services energy charge fell 38.0% to meet the 13.5¢ ceiling. The index fell 45.6%, its largest monthly decline on record, then printed 119.2 in January and 119.2 again in February while the ceiling held the rate flat.

Fixed-contract customers saw the opposite. One-year fixed offers rose 11.0%, from 15.31¢ in December 2022 to 17.00¢ in January (MSA Data Portal). An index weighted to fixed contracts would have risen.

Floating-plan customers saw prices fall further than the regulated rate did. The MSA reports residential variable rates of “more than 33¢/kWh” in December 2022 (Q4 2022 report) and 14.23¢ in January 2023 (Q1 2023 report), a fall of at least 56.9%. An index weighted to floating plans would also have fallen hard.

The two non-residential selling price indexes rose 23.7% and 28.5% that month, which the September version read as the market going up. They rise most Januaries: the under-5000 kW index rose in 9 of the 12 Januaries from 2015, and by more than 20% in 2022 (23.3%) and 2025 (23.5%).

The non-residential indexes jump most Januaries; in 2023 the household index fell

December-to-January % change in each index, Alberta · 2015–2026 · same scale in all three panels · 2023 in coral

CPI electricity, households

Selling price, under 5000 kW

Selling price, 5000 kW and over

Look at the coral bars: January 2023's non-residential rises sit among other Januaries of the same size, and only the household panel's 2023 bar points down.

The rebate also changed size during these months, so two things moved at once. The September version gave scenario bounds of 57% to 100% of the index on the regulated rate for this month; they assumed the rest of the market rose, and are withdrawn.

A null result

Statistics Canada does not say, in either direction

The methodology does not settle it. All eleven chapters of the Consumer Price Index Reference Paper, in the 2023 and 2019 editions, were swept along with the survey record and the collection methodology pages. “Electric” occurs three times in the Reference Paper and none of them is responsive. “Regulated rate”, “rate option”, “electricity retailer” and “supply arrangement” return nothing. The 2023 edition was still the latest on 15 October 2026.

The nearest passage is an endnote: examples of product classes with one seller in a geographical stratum “include some public utilities such as water or electricity companies”. That says electricity may be priced that way. It says nothing about Alberta, which seller, or default rates against competitive contracts.

Nothing here is a Statistics Canada statement. The reading on this page is an inference from how the index behaves against published rates, and the rates, method and arithmetic are all above.

A report commissioned by the Alberta Federation of Labour, a union publishing advocacy, made the same inference in October 2024 about the energy components of the Alberta electricity CPI and the Hydro-Québec price series:

“…the respective energy components for residential users appear to only track changes in the RRO over time but excludes the majority of residential customers that are on contracts. This is an analytical challenge because it does not allow for an accurate assessment of the change in effective prices paid by households over time. This is a data gap that should be closed by the Government of Alberta.”
Edgardo Sepulveda, Power in the Public Interest, published by the Alberta Federation of Labour, October 2024, p.26 · report

“Appear to” is the author's hedge. The passage is a methodological inference, not a statement from Statistics Canada and not a test against published rates.

Licensing

The wholesale price does not appear here

The pool price is the hourly wholesale price that spikes in a cold snap and collapses on a windy afternoon, the number the trade press reports and most arguments start from. It is published by the Alberta Electric System Operator, whose terms of use permit internal and non-commercial use only. FlossyPurse Studios Data is a commercial product.

No pool figure appears on this page or in its data files, as a level, an average or a chart.

Plain words · The most obvious number on an electricity page, and why it isn't here

Anyone who follows Alberta electricity closely thinks first of the pool price — the hourly wholesale price that spikes in a January cold snap and collapses on a windy afternoon. It is the number the trade press reports and the number most arguments about Alberta power start from.

It is published by the Alberta Electric System Operator, whose terms of use permit internal and non-commercial use only. FlossyPurse Studios Data is a commercial product. So the pool price does not appear here as a level, a monthly average, part of a composite, or a chart. There is no open, commercially reusable substitute for it.

Everything priced on this page is therefore retail: an index of what households pay, two indexes of what non-residential customers pay, one derived average of residential bills, and the published regulated rates. None of them tracks the pool, and nothing on this page should be described as a wholesale price.

The consequence carries through the page. What households were charged and what the index did are both here. What electricity cost to produce in any hour is not, so a rate that rose because the market rose cannot be told apart from one that rose for another reason, and floating plans since 2025 cannot be checked against the market they follow.

2005–2025 · the only figure in money

One number on this page is in dollars, and it is a quotient rather than a price

Everything so far is an index or a rate. The is in money: all residential electricity revenue divided by all residential volume. It blends energy, transmission, distribution, riders and administration, and it shifts when the customer mix shifts even if no tariff moves. No household pays it. It is defined the same way in all 21 years and does not depend on which retail plan anyone chose.

Over the full span, what it says depends on the method. The first five years of the record against the last five: it fell 34.7% in , and fell 8.9% in the dollars of the day. The figure that circulates, a rise of 7.9% from 2005 to 2025, compares two single years of a noisy quotient. Whether electricity “got more expensive in dollars” flips with the window. Against a general price level that rose 59.3%, it got cheaper on every window.

Plain words · A quotient, not a rate — and a noisy one

This is the only figure on this page denominated in money rather than index points, and it is not a price anyone is charged. It is an arithmetic quotient: every dollar Alberta utilities reported collecting from residential customers, divided by every megawatt hour they reported selling them.

Its virtue is consistency. It is defined the same way for twenty years and is completely indifferent to which retail plan was fashionable, which makes it the one series here unaffected by the argument the rest of the page is having.

Its vice is that it is a quotient, so a reporting problem in either half moves it. Two years in this record are artifacts of exactly that: one where the revenue numerator collapses, one where the volume denominator does. The series is noisy enough year to year that its wiggles should not be read as household behaviour, which is why this page quotes it as an average of five years against an average of five years and not as one year against another.

The same series, counted two ways, going two directions

Implied average residential price, Alberta · cents per kilowatt hour, nominal and in constant 2024 dollars · annual, 2005–2025 · residential sales value ÷ residential sales volume

Look at the gap opening between the two lines: the nominal line ends near where it started, the constant-dollar line well below. The marked years are reporting artifacts.

Five years against five. A point-to-point figure on a quotient depends on its starting year. Starting in 2008 the real decline reads −42.5%; starting in 2010 it reads −4.0%, against the same endpoint. The five-year-mean form survives dropping any single year.

The wiggles. Year to year the real series moves a median of 7.8% and as much as 27.8%. In 2010 the revenue numerator falls 23.4% while the volume it is divided by rises 5.1%; in 2014 the volume denominator falls 16.7% while revenue falls only 2.3%. The denominator alone travels −21.8% between 2011 and 2014.

Does the distance between the household index and this average reflect who is on the regulated rate? No. Between 2005 and 2023, on annual means, the two non-residential selling price indexes rose 469.7% and 342.8% against the household index's 175.0%. Those indexes cover predominantly non-default customers, and they diverge from this average two to three times harder.

Between 2005 and 2023 the household index rose least of the three

CPI electricity and the two electric power selling price indexes · all three rebased so January 2014 = 100 · monthly, 1981–September 2026

Look at the stretch from 2005 to 2023, where both non-residential lines climb away from the household one. The gap in the larger-customer line across September 2012–December 2013 is 16 months Statistics Canada did not publish.

2005–2026 · the physical system

More than a quarter of Alberta's electricity is generated by industry for itself

Alberta generated 91.7 TWh in 2025, 43.9% more than in 2005. Utility generation rose 14.0% over those twenty years and supplied 28.7% of the added output. , mostly oil sands cogeneration, rose 310%, from 10.1% of provincial output to 28.7%.

Industrial self-generation grew from a tenth of output to more than a quarter

Generation by class of producer · terawatt hours, annual · 2005–2025 · the two classes sum exactly to the published provincial total

Look at the upper band: industry's own generation thickens year after year while the utility band beneath it grows slowly.

What that fleet burns is harder to follow, because the classification changed underneath it. Statistics Canada recut the dimension in January 2016, from the technology of the turbine to the fuel it burns. The old members publish nothing after December 2015 and the new ones nothing before January 2016. No plant closed at that boundary and none opened, and no published series carries coal, or natural gas, continuously across it. The two eras are two charts. Within each, the published members sum to the published total.

Plain words · A classification that changed under an unchanged fleet

Until December 2015 Alberta's generation was published by turbine technology: conventional steam, combustion turbine, internal combustion, hydraulic, wind. From January 2016 it is published by fuel: combustible fuels, hydraulic, wind, solar, other. The old members publish nothing after 2015; the new ones publish nothing before 2016.

No plant closed and none opened at that boundary. The categories changed underneath a fleet that kept running. Drawing a stacked area across the whole range without accounting for it produces a picture of Alberta's thermal generation vanishing in a single month, which is not something that happened.

So this page draws the two eras as two charts and never splices them. The missing months are absent rather than plotted as zero, because a category that was not published is not a category that produced nothing.

Before 2016: conventional steam turbines supplied most output

Alberta generation by turbine technology · terawatt hours, complete calendar years 2008–2015 · all classes of producer

Look at the bottom band, conventional steam, which carries most of the province in every year of this classification.

From 2016: combustible fuels shrank as a share while wind and solar grew

Alberta generation by fuel · terawatt hours, complete calendar years 2016–2025 · all classes of producer · combustible fuels shown as its published total, never beside its own components

Look at the right-hand years, where the wind and solar bands widen. Combustible fuels went from 91.5% of output in 2016 to 76.0% in 2025; wind from 5.8% to 17.3%; solar reached 4.1%. 2026 joins when its twelfth month is published.

The two generation tables are separate surveys and disagree. Summed to a year, the monthly by-type table differs from the annual by-producer table by as much as 25%, in 2015. Neither is corrected against the other, so a producer-class share and a fuel share never appear in the same chart or sentence here. The 2 classification breaks ship as structured metadata in the source file.

Testing the reading

What would break this reading, and what has been checked

Each line names a result that would contradict the reading at the top of this page, the measure used, and what the record shows as of 2 November 2026. The first is the headline of the previous version, which this update replaces.

1.
“Follows a third of its households” · Does not hold now
It fails if the share of residential sites on the default rate is no longer near a third.
Result: 18.4% in June 2026. The third was the 31.5% average of 2023.
2.
The slope rules out fixed contracts (2018–24) · Holds
It fails if the measured slope is near the 0.18 an index of all residential customers, mostly on fixed terms, would show.
Result: 0.50. Under that reading the energy charge would be 1.34 of a bill, which is impossible.
3.
The ceiling month rules out fixed contracts · Holds
It fails if fixed-contract prices fell into January 2023 as the index did.
Result: One-year fixed offers rose 11.0%; the index fell 45.6%.
4.
The ceiling month rules out floating plans · Does not hold
It fails if floating rates also fell sharply into January 2023.
Result: They fell at least 56.9%, more than the regulated rate's 38.0%. The non-residential rises that month match their usual January pattern.
5.
The 2025 break singles out the regulated rate · Does not hold
It fails if the non-residential control goes as flat as the household index once January 2025 is left out.
Result: 16.7-fold against 14.4-fold from February 2025. With the boundary month, 12.5-fold against 2.8-fold.
6.
The index does not follow the stock of fixed contracts since 2025 · Holds
It fails if the index drifts down from January 2025 to June 2026 as contracts renew at lower offers.
Result: Trailing averages of fixed offers fell 10.8% to 23.3%; the index rose 3.7%. Offers, not prices paid.
7.
One population across both eras · Cannot be checked
It fails if Statistics Canada changed what the index samples on 1 January 2025. Tests 2 and 6 combine only if it did not.
Result: Nothing published either way. The alternative needs a switch from floating plans to the Rate of Last Resort on the statutory date, without notice.
8.
The boundary month moves with the rate · Unresolved
It fails if the index moves against the rate at the change of instrument.
Result: In January 2025 the Direct Energy Regulated Services rate rose 1.5% and the index fell 3.9%. One month, with other territories' December rates not on file.
9.
The next check · Pending
It fails if the January 2027 index, due in mid-February 2027, does not move by roughly 0.50 times the change in the new Rate of Last Resort, net of any change in wires charges that month.
Result: Not yet set. The term runs January 2027 to December 2028; the rates are due at least 30 days before it starts, and changes between terms “cannot normally exceed 10%” (UCA). At the 12.82¢ projection in circulation (secondary source), a change of about 6.7%, the index should rise about 3.3%.

Reading it back

What the record can't yet say

The reading is narrow. Alberta's electricity price index moves with the province's regulated default rate, at 0.938 and 0.955 across two independently sourced territories. Its slope rules out an index mostly on fixed contracts before 2025. Since 2025 its rise rules out the fixed-contract stock, and the ceiling month excluded fixed contracts in 2023. Neither separates the regulated rate from floating plans. Six things are still open.

Eight years are untested. No regulated rate could be sourced for any provider between 2010 and 2017: ENMAX's page of that era used a widget whose backend was never archived, and the other utilities' published histories start later. The test rests on 2018–2024 and on the Rate of Last Resort since.

Floating plans. The slope and the ceiling month cannot tell the regulated rate from a floating plan, and since 2025 the only monthly record of the market floating plans follow is the AESO pool price (see the missing number). How much of the index sits on floating plans is not tested here.

The exact share. The tests bound the weight on fixed contracts; they do not give a percentage on the regulated rate. A published breakdown of the energy share of an Alberta residential bill would turn the slope's bound into a number. None has been found.

What households on contracts paid. The MSA now publishes fixed-contract offers by month; no series records what the 82% of sites on competitive contracts actually pay. This is the gap the Sepulveda report asks the province to close.

What moved the index since 2025. It rose 3.6% in June 2025 and 1.2% in January 2026 with the energy charge unchanged. Wires and riders are the candidates, and this page carries no wires series.

Whether the index moves in January 2027. The current term ends in December 2026. If the reading is right, the index moves when the next rate takes effect, by roughly half of what the rate does. The January 2027 reading is published in February 2027.

Show the work

Method, sources, and what this page can't do

Four kinds of source, kept apart. The index series, the implied residential average, the generation tables and the electricity balance are Statistics Canada, read from its Web Data Service through the same fetch and checks that fill the Data substrate, retrieved 2026-11-02 under the Statistics Canada Open Licence, which permits commercial use. Adapted from Statistics Canada; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. The regulated rates are 130 figures read from 12 documents published by the utilities and the Government of Alberta, listed in the data file that ships with this page, plus the Rate of Last Resort from Direct Energy's rate page, checked 15 October 2026. The default-rate shares, the fixed-contract offers and the variable-rate figures are the Market Surveillance Administrator's, read on 15 October 2026 from its Data Portal (retail statistics refreshed 5 October 2026, data to June 2026) and its quarterly reports. The fixed offers originate with the Utilities Consumer Advocate (UCA): the one-year means and the trailing-average falls are computed from the UCA's offers as the MSA republishes them, and are credited to the UCA. Each MSA figure is cited individually with its link; no MSA table is republished.

Levels are never compared. The consumer price index for electricity is 2002 = 100; both selling price indexes are 2014 = 100; the regulated rate is a price in cents. No two are subtracted or divided as published. Every comparison is a rate of change, or the series are rebased to a stated common month.

Adjacency. A month-over-month change requires two consecutive months. The older ENMAX figures come from individual news releases with months or years between them, so the correlations use the continuous runs only: October 2018 to December 2024 for Direct Energy Regulated Services, December 2021 to November 2024 for ENMAX. The Rate of Last Resort months appear in the line chart and stay out of the fit: twenty-odd months of a constant rate would add zero-change pairs and move the slope.

Months set aside. The correlations exclude July 2022 to May 2023, every month in which a provincial rebate, a price ceiling or both were moving what consumers paid without moving the rate. That is wider than the 13.5¢ ceiling, which ran three months: the rebate began earlier, changed size and ended later, and splitting on the ceiling alone pulls the fitted slope from 0.50 to about 0.44. A pair of months is set aside if either month falls in the window. Those months are charted and the all-months correlations reported.

Nulls are not zeros. Statistics Canada withheld or had not begun 2,544 periods across the 29 series read for this page. They are excluded from every chart rather than filled with zero. Annual figures use complete twelve-month years only.

Computed and typed. The correlations, slopes, damping, volatility ratios, January changes, five-year means and generation shares are computed at build time from the JSON the charts draw. Typed by hand, each with its link: the quotations; the MSA shares, commercial shares, variable rates and fixed offers; the three trailing-average falls in the fixed-offer proxy; and the 12.82¢ projection, which is secondary. The page title and description are strings, and the build checks their figures against the computed ones.

What changed on 2 November 2026. Statistics Canada data only: one more month of the index (September 2026) and of generation (August 2026), and 2025 added to the annual generation, balance and implied residential price tables. Statistics Canada revised its 2024 generation and balance figures; no monthly value was revised. The MSA figures, the published rates and the Reference Paper sweep are as read on 15 October 2026.

What changed on 15 October 2026. The headline share moved from a third to 18.4%. The ceiling month's case against floating plans, the 2025 break as a test of whose price, the floating-weight bound derived from it and the 57%–100% scenario bounds were withdrawn; the fixed-offer check on 2025–26 was added. “Thirteen months” between the record fall and the record high is corrected to seven.

Figures found, checked, and left out.

1.The electricity balance's disposition side (does not reconcile) — available-for-use should equal producers' own use plus sales plus . It does not, in 8 of 21 years, by as much as 18.5 TWh in 2014. The unallocated term is described in the source as losses of around 7 TWh a year, but it is negative in 5 of those years (2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020), which a loss term cannot be. Nothing here is charted from the disposition split. The supply side reconciles to within 11.1 GWh in its worst year, and the residential share of total sales taken from it, 15.3% in 2005 rising to 21.1% in 2025, is quoted here and nowhere else.
2.Regulated rate levels against the implied average (does not reconcile) — the energy charge alone runs close to double the implied all-in average in some years. A third-party figure for the average fixed contract in the same year already exceeds the all-in average, which is arithmetically impossible if that average includes wires. The comparison has an error that has not been located, so it appears nowhere.
3.EPCOR and Fortis monthly rates (sourced, unused) — 2024 rates for two further territories were sourced and verified. One year of two extra utilities adds no independent test beyond six years of two others, and both publish a separate deferral-rate column that is not part of the energy charge. The 130 figures are Direct Energy Regulated Services and ENMAX only.
4.Figures that circulate widely (two untraceable, one contradicted) — a Reference Paper passage about electricity being collected at intervals longer than a month, a commonly cited share of a 2024 inflation gap, and a regulated-rate share of about 26% for 2025. The first does not exist: the real passage gives tuition fees and property tax as its examples. The second could not be traced. The third is contradicted by the regulator's series. A 2021 share of about 45%, once listed here as untraceable, is the MSA's January 2021 reading and appears above.

Sources excluded. Several sources an Alberta electricity page would normally use are absent by decision.

·AESO — Alberta Electric System Operator, wholesale pool price and hourly load — AESO's terms of use permit internal and non-commercial use only. FlossyPurse Studios Data is a commercial product, so the pool price cannot be shipped, charted, or derived from — not as a level, not as a monthly average, not inside a composite. This is the reason this page has retail price indexes and one derived retail average and no wholesale price at all. terms
·Roughly thirty archived ENMAX “DT Rate Schedule” / “DT Tariff Rate Schedule” PDFs, 2007–2021 — Those are distribution tariff (wires) schedules — service and facilities charge, system usage charge, transmission variable charge — not the RRO energy rate. Mixing them in would have blended bundled charges into an energy-only series and wrecked the comparison.
·EPCOR/EDTI and FortisAlberta monthly rates for 2024 — Sourced and verified, but they cover one year only and both carry a separate GOA/RRO deferral column that is not part of the energy rate. One year of two extra territories adds no independent test beyond what DERS and ENMAX already provide over six years.
·Alberta Utilities Commission and Utilities Consumer Advocate — reference-only licensing. Their material is read for facts and cited by URL; no AUC or UCA table is reproduced. The fixed-offer figures above are statistics computed from UCA offers and credited to the UCA.

Gaps in the record. Five gaps in the Statistics Canada material bound what the page can claim.

1.Wholesale (pool) price (unavailable) — The Alberta wholesale pool price is published only by AESO, under a non-commercial licence. There is no open, commercially reusable substitute. Every price series on this page is retail: an index of what households pay (CPI electricity), two indexes of what nonresidential customers pay, and one derived implied residential average in dollars. None of them tracks the pool.
2.Generation by fuel across 2016 (partial) — No published series carries coal, or natural gas, continuously from 2008 to now. Before 2016-01 the type dimension cuts by turbine technology; after it, by fuel. The two cuts overlap in no month. Only the all-types total, hydraulic and wind run unbroken, and generation-mix.json ships the breaks as structured metadata so a chart can show the discontinuity rather than imply a fleet turnover that did not happen.
3.Non-residential sales by customer class (partial) — Table 25-10-0021 publishes agriculture, mining and manufacturing, and other industries sales for Alberta. Those three classes are not collected, so supply-disposition.json has total sales and residential sales but nothing between them. A residential share of total sales is computable; a full customer-class breakdown is not.
4.Real (inflation-adjusted) prices (partial) — The one dollar series on this page — the implied average residential price — ships nominal and real side by side, deflated into 2024 dollars by the Alberta all-items CPI, with the annual averaging checked against Statistics Canada's own published annual figures. What is NOT deflated is the three index series in prices.json: they are published indexes and are shipped as published. A relative price — electricity against all-items — is computable from what is here but is not shipped as a series, and the base-year mismatch between the two index families makes it a per-chart decision rather than a column in a file.
5.Monthly generation before 2008 (unavailable) — Table 25-10-0015 begins in January 2008 for every type member. The annual by-producer and supply-disposition tables reach back to 2005; nothing here reaches further, and the monthly mix cannot be extended backwards from the annual figures because they come from a different survey.

Cross-check. Statistics Canada's own commentary reports Alberta electricity prices falling 45.6% in January 2023 and 24.4% in July 2022. The series shipped with this page gives 45.6% and 24.4%.

Data: 25-10-0015, 25-10-0020, 25-10-0021, 18-10-0204, 18-10-0004 (Statistics Canada, Open Licence), utility and Government of Alberta rate publications, and the Market Surveillance Administrator. Statistics Canada data fetched 2026-11-02; Rate of Last Resort checked 2026-10-15; MSA figures read 2026-10-15.

Plain-words glossary — every term on this page, in one place

Annual mean.: The average of a year's twelve monthly readings. For a series as volatile as this one, a comparison between annual means and a comparison between individual months can differ by a factor of two, so this page states which it is using every time.
Class of producer.: Who generated the electricity: electric utilities, or industry generating for itself. Alberta's industrial self-generation is mostly oil sands cogeneration and is a large share of provincial output, so a count of utility generation alone materially understates the province.
Competitive contract.: An electricity supply agreement with a private retailer rather than the regulated default — usually a fixed rate held for a term of one to five years, sometimes a floating rate that tracks the market. A household on a fixed contract sees no price change at all between renewals.
Correlation coefficient.: A number between −1 and 1 measuring how closely two series move together: 1 is perfect agreement, 0 is none. It measures co-movement and nothing else — two series can correlate because one drives the other, because something drives both, or by accident. It is evidence, not proof.
CPI electricity index.: Statistics Canada's price index for electricity in Alberta, part of the consumer price index and published monthly since September 1978. It is an index, not a price: it is set to 100 in 2002 and every other month is a ratio to that, so it can tell you how much something changed and never what it costs.
Electric power selling price index.: Statistics Canada's monthly index of what non-residential customers pay for electricity, published separately for customers with demand under 5000 kW and 5000 kW and over, 2014 = 100. There is no residential member. Its customers are predominantly on competitive terms; small commercial sites can take the default rate, and whether the index samples them is not published.
Electricity rebate.: A credit applied to a bill. Alberta's 2022–23 rebates went to all consumers, on the regulated rate and on competitive contracts alike — which is what distinguishes them from the price ceiling, and why the two cannot be treated as one intervention.
Energy charge.: The commodity part of an electricity bill: the electricity itself, in cents per kilowatt hour. It sits alongside distribution, transmission, riders, administration and tax, which are billed separately and by different rules. Every regulated-rate figure on this page is the energy charge alone, and none of them is a bill.
Implied average residential price.: Total residential electricity revenue divided by total residential volume — dollars collected over megawatt hours sold. It blends energy, transmission, distribution, riders and administration into a single number, and it shifts when the mix of customers shifts even if no tariff moves. No household pays it.
Month-over-month change.: The percentage change from one month to the month immediately before it. Comparing two series as rates of change rather than as levels is what makes it legitimate to put an index and a price in the same sentence — they have no common scale, but their movements do.
Price ceiling.: A legal maximum on what may be charged. Alberta capped the regulated rate's energy charge at 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour for January, February and March of 2023. By the terms of the announcement it applied to regulated-rate customers and to nobody else.
Rate of Last Resort.: The regulated default rate that replaced the Regulated Rate Option on 1 January 2025. The instrument that created it requires it to be set for a two-year term rather than recalculated monthly, so it does not move within a term.
Real and nominal.: Nominal is the number as it was billed. Real restates it in one year's dollars so amounts from different years can be compared. Over this page's twenty-year span the residential average moves in opposite directions depending which one is used, and both are correct.
Regression slope.: How far one series moves, on average, for a one-unit move in another. Here: the percentage the index moves for each one per cent the regulated rate moves. Unlike a correlation, a slope has a magnitude that can be checked against what is physically possible.
Regulated Rate Option.: Alberta's regulated default electricity rate — what a household paid if it never signed a contract with a competitive retailer. Until the end of 2024 it was reset every month, which is why it moved so much and so fast.
Type of generation.: What the electricity was generated from. Statistics Canada recut this classification in January 2016, from the technology of the machine to the fuel it burns, and the two cuts share no month — so no published series carries coal, or natural gas, continuously across that date.
Unallocated.: In the electricity balance, what is left after own-use and sales are subtracted from what was available: transmission and distribution losses plus unbilled volume. In Alberta's published figures it goes negative in five of twenty years, which a genuine loss term cannot do.
Wholesale pool price.: The price generators are paid in Alberta's wholesale electricity market, set every hour. It is published by the Alberta Electric System Operator under a licence permitting internal and non-commercial use, so no pool figure appears on this page and nothing here may be read as a substitute for it.

Where to go next. Statistics Canada publishes every series on this page openly at statcan.gc.ca; the regulated rates are linked source by source in the data file behind this page; the MSA's retail statistics are on its Data Portal. Alberta's economy read through the price of oil is here; the housing record is here, and the climate record is here. The previous version of this page is archived.

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Corrections

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