Shoulder-Season Calm as Structural Pressures Build

Wholesale power markets across North America moved through the week ending May 15 in a generally stable shoulder-season pattern, with little evidence of broad regional reliability stress in the reviewed materials. Public daily market publications across the organized markets showed a routine operating cadence, while available real-time price reporting suggested that peak pricing was driven mainly by localized congestion, renewable ramps, and ordinary weather-related load variation rather than systemwide scarcity. In the West, CAISO and the WEIM footprint remained focused on market-integration execution and stakeholder processes, while SPP and Markets+ continued to advance western governance and large-load-related work rather than responding to acute operating events.