Summary - Power Markets, Pricing & Commercial Strategies

About the course

The global power sector is being reshaped by electrification, continued use of natural gas, and renewed focus on nuclear and other sources of dependable baseload. Demand from AI, digital infrastructure, and transport electrification is surging, heightening the pressure for energy security, grid investment, and rapid capacity growth.

As renewables expand, batteries and other dispatchable sources, like gas and nuclear, remain vital for balancing grids and stabilizing power systems. Renewables are also expanding their revenue strategies as markets grow and change. At the same time, increasingly volatile and interconnected power markets are creating new commercial opportunities and risks. Understanding how electricity is traded, how prices form across different market designs, and how market participants manage volatility is becoming increasingly important for generators, utilities, traders, investors, and large energy consumers.

This 3-day course offers a practical, integrated view of US and global power markets, power trading, covering how electricity prices form across day-ahead, intraday and real-time markets; how physical and financial trading strategies are applied; and how contracts, hedging, congestion, capacity markets and ancillary services influence revenues and risk. Participants will explore the fundamentals of power trading strategies, including spreads, locational and temporal opportunities, renewable intermittency, storage optimization and managing exposure to volatile prices.

The course will also introduce the fundamentals of algorithmic power trading, examining how automation, data, forecasting and trading algorithms are increasingly used to identify opportunities and execute strategies in short-term electricity markets.

Participants will leave with actionable insight into the commercial, trading, technical and policy forces shaping power markets and the wider energy transition.

Learning objectives:

US & Global Power Markets: Understand the fundamentals of US power markets, including ISO/RTO structures such as PJM, ERCOT and CAISO, and compare them with key international power-market models.
Power Trading Fundamentals & Strategies: Understand day-ahead, intraday and real-time trading, price formation, congestion and basis risk, and how physical and financial trading and hedging strategies are used to manage exposure and capture market value.
Algorithmic Trading: Explore the fundamentals of algorithmic power trading, including market data, forecasting, automated execution, strategy development and the growing role of AI and analytics in short-term trading.
Capacity & Demand: Analyze AI and data-center-driven electricity demand, growing electrification, and the implications for firm generation, grid capacity and battery energy storage system (BESS) investment.
Gas & Nuclear: Evaluate the continued role of natural gas and LNG alongside evolving nuclear technologies, including SMRs, in providing reliable and flexible power generation.
Infrastructure & Flexibility: Analyze how transmission expansion, grid modernization, storage, demand response and flexible generation affect energy security, market pricing and investment opportunities.
Commercial Risk & Opportunity: Assess how volatility, renewable intermittency, changing market structures and evolving regulation affect asset revenues, trading strategies and investment decisions.