EDAM Exposes PacifiCorp East-West Price Split in Month
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- PacifiCorp East averaged $8.62/MWh day-ahead in May against PACW's $18.97/MWh, with PACE clearing negative in 17% of hours (bottoming at -$41.78/MWh) versus PACW's 2%
- PACE's generation mix — roughly one-third coal plus wind and solar together about half — drove deep midday net-load troughs, while PACW's gas-and-hydro stack (each ~one-third of cleared energy) kept the daily curve shallow
- CAISO's day-ahead greenhouse-gas component averaged $2.28/MWh across May but cleared at exactly $0 in 96% of midday solar hours, vanishing when California net-exports and reappearing overnight when regulated imports return
- Valley Electric Association, a Nevada entity inside CAISO but exempt from California's carbon rules, cleared at $10.70/MWh against PG&E's $19.22/MWh — showing that carbon footprint, not balancing-authority boundaries, drives the GHG premium
- Imbalance Reserve and Reliability Capacity launched alongside EDAM as distinct day-ahead products, and May produced virtually no cleared supply shortfalls across either new market
- PACW's thin ~2.8 GW peak stack produced the spikiest early-May clears and intraday swings out of proportion to its hydro-heavy fundamentals — flagged as a marker of where small balancing areas are most exposed inside a shared market
- Portland General Electric is scheduled to join EDAM later this year, with Public Service Co. of New Mexico and in-California balancing authorities set to follow in 2027
Why it matters: For PacifiCorp, EDAM is functioning less as a unifying western market than as a transparency mechanism: a coal-and-solar-heavy PACE stack produces midday negatives 8.5x more often than PACW's gas-and-hydro mix. For would-be entrants PNM and PGE, the May data signals exactly where their own resource mix will land them on the price curve — and how thin their bid stacks may look on volatile days.
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