ONTARIO
2025 Summer Peak Season Results
The 2025 summer was a challenging peak season in Ontario – demand levels were the highest in over a decade and there were data issues from the IESO at times, however, EnPowered hit all 5 top peaks for the Industrial Conservation Initiative (ICI).
EnPowered made 15 calls and hit all 5 peaks. In comparison, the broader market saw as many as 28 curtailments, with many capturing only 4 of the 5 peaks.
Let’s talk about a few key facts about this summer season:
- Demand this summer was extremely higher than previous years, in fact last years #1 peak would have ranked as #8 this year!
- The heat – multiple, intense heatwaves. This summer we had 23 days over 30 degrees or higher (as compared to 14 days above 30 degrees in previous years)
- Operating in a new market with the IESO Market Renewal Program (MRP) going live on May 1st.
- Numerous data outages or delays occurred during peak times and inconsistencies in high demand spikes and drops – we know the IESO are working through these issues.
This summer we made more calls than in any previous year, however the market dynamics drove this need as we continued to focus on our highest priority – hitting all the peaks (again).
Looking ahead, there still remains a chance of winter peaks, but a winter demand level exceeding 24,211MW, the current 5th peak, would likely require a lengthy extreme cold snap.
2025 Hourly Electricity Prices post Market Renewal Program
Energy prices were low in May and most of June but then rose significantly in the latter part of June through to mid-August this summer. Our Day-Ahead Price Monitoring (DAPM) service proved extremely valuable to help our customers avoid the high price hours – some got over $300MW/hour, enabling them to achieve significant savings. Now that we are into fall prices have moderated again but we still have seen days of hourly pricing crossing over $140MW/hour, still proving valuable to participate in the day ahead market to unlock savings.
2025 Summer Demand Response Performance
This summer Ontario experienced the highest number of DR activations on record, with most activation days aligned with peak days. This meant that by participating in both ICI Peaks and Demand Response, participants were maximizing their energy savings and revenues, earning as much as $22,500/MW more by curtailing during these emergency events simply by doing what they would have done on a regular peak day anyway.
Additionally, our customers delivered their strongest performance on capacity test days, a credit to our partnering with our customers to ensure effective curtailment planning and EnPowered providing an industry leading 21 days notice of the date and time of the summer tests.
PJM
PJM experienced record-breaking demand this summer. The top peak 160,464 MW during the June heatwave — set a new all-time high. The current top 5 peaks are split between two major heat events in June and July.
Notably we saw:
- More market participation (load reductions) is evident this year, a positive sign as capacity prices are set to rise by 25% next year so this means more customers are participating than ever before.
- Transmission zones such as PPL, Penelec, and APS have largely avoided curtailment this summer due to high winter demand setting their capacity obligations early.
Our PJM customers in ATSI, AEP, APS, METED, PSEG, and PPL zones all hit 5/5 peaks! Seeing savings up to $278,789 per MW/year in zones such as PSEG. With capacity prices set to rise in the 2026/27 year our customers benefited by additional savings this year capturing transmission peaks. In some markets responding to transmission peaks are more lucrative in savings than capacity. If you can stack these together that is even better.
NYISO
While the official peak window in New York runs from July 1 to August 31, the first major heat wave came in June setting the highest usage values on June 23 with near-record demand levels. Nevertheless, since June doesn’t count in New York, the current #1 peak occurred on July 29 at 6-7pm, which also saw demand levels not seen in many years.
Our New York customers received only two peak calls, including successfully hitting the July 29th peak hour for the season, helping them to reduce their iCAP tags for next year.
Related Resources
