Building Strathcona Power — July 2026

To recap, I’m building up a boutique energy retailer (Strathcona Power), to be your local, human options for power and natural gas.

This is a follow-up to April’s status update. June was busy enough that I missed that update/included the highlights here.

Pricing Update

This section is general notes on electricity and natural gas pricing in Alberta, looking back at May and June and forward to July.

The floating price for electricity came in at the lowest its been in a decade, continuing its currently low streak. Floating natural gas is low as well, more than a dollar below available fixed prices. In short, I’m a fan of both and hope you are signed up on them.

Fixed prices are relatively low, but seem to have (temporarily?) stopped dropping. We’re starting to see data centers announced¹ with more promised, and so this is pointed to for a reason that longer terms for power and gas are higher. If you want to sign up for a fixed gas price for next winter, this might be a good time to do so. For electricity, during the last cycle, 5 year fixed rates bottomed out at ~6 1/2 ¢/kWh by comparision.

Our pricing for July:

Term	Electricity	Natural Gas
Floating²	~2.7 ¢/kWh	~$2.65/GJ
1 year Fixed	6.99 ¢/kWh	$3.69/GJ
2 year Fixed	7.39 ¢/kWh	$3.89/GJ
3 year Fixed	8.19 ¢/kWh	$3.89/GJ
5 year Fixed	9.39 ¢/kWh	$3.89/GJ

Our pricing for June:

Term	Electricity	Natural Gas
Floating³	~4.4 ¢/kWh	~$2.00/GJ
1 year Fixed	6.99 ¢/kWh	$3.69/GJ
2 year Fixed	7.39 ¢/kWh	$3.79/GJ
3 year Fixed	7.99 ¢/kWh	$3.89/GJ
5 year Fixed	8.99 ¢/kWh	$3.95/GJ

Retailing Progress

The retailing business is growing slightly more quickly, up 17 sites to a total of 128. I’ve expanded co-marketting efforts, which have born fruit, and I’m pretty excited to see what they will bring in over the summer and onward.

I’ve worked to get my own online marketing campaign, but it has yet to show any sales. This is super frustrating; I’ve reached out to an advisor to improve this.

Generation Progress

A secondary line of the business I’ve been focused on is building my own generation capacity, to compliment the retail sales.

For my first 10 kW of generation, I has originally hoping to have it installed over three month ago (i.e. when the ground un-froze). Instead, the loan has come back with a request for yet additional paperwork; that said, they’ve finally provided a written criteria that I can meet to quality, and I’ve sent them a letter to show I meet their criteria. Now the question is how long they will take to process that…it’s been a week with no communication from them so far (no news is good news??).

For the second tranche (of ~70 kW of generation), the paperwork is in a holding pattern over a similiar issue.

The third tranche of larger sites (hosting 35 to 150 kW of generation per site) is showing slow progress. I have a confirmed site for a 35kW generator, and am working through the purchase paperwork and the connection agreement. If everything goes well, I hope to (optomistically) be online by the end of October, although revenue might not show here for another three months (so January). I’ve been to several other prospective sites in this category over the last month: one of them is no longer available and three more would be leased sites (which imply longer timelines till go-live).

One success is I’ve found a source of financing for the generators, and they are generally comfortable with 100% financing, including installation costs. However, I need to show ~25+% returns to be able to carry the financing costs, which rules out most of the first and second traches sites, but select third tranche sites should still work. I’m excited about these possibilities!

Looking forward, I’m a little frustrated at the fact that already these (blog) updates seem to show me stuck at the same spot already. I expected the generation to take some time to come online, but I’ve been working at the first one since last October, and am still at least four months out from seeing revenue. I’m also not sure what to change to make it go faster; at least the first of the third tranche sites is a standalone business that will start bringing in income even before the generator goes live.

Current KPI’s

KPI	Status	Trend	Target Date
Site Count	128 / 420	17 / 49	end of January 2027
Generation Online	0 / 50 kW
ARR⁴	~$4.3k / $100k

Site count growth is holding steady, although the next 6 or 7 months are going to be demanding. I’ve made my first site count target (of 120 sites by the end of July) and a month early which is wonderful, so my focus here is on the next target (of 420 sites by the end of next January).

ARR remains low (though the gross is growing) because on the generation side I’m paying interest on upfront installation costs, but it isn’t generated any income yet. I’ve also started to see some advertising costs, further bringing the net income down. Finally, I’ve excluded some one-off items that happened this month.

Review of Last Month’s Plans

resolve first tranch generation loan paperwork issue — sadly, still in progress, but promising progress
resolve the Backend’s proposed change to the service agreement — done!
launch a marketting campaign — done, but not turning into sales yet

Plans for the Coming Month

resolve my first tranch generation loan paperwork issue
launch my second marketting campaign
- I’m not adding it here, because they say that goals should focus on things that you can control, but I’d really like to see sales start coming in from these marketting campaigns.
secure financing for my first third tranche site, ideally for both the site itself and the generator.

How You Can Help

I’m grateful for your help in growing the Strathcona Power. If you live in Alberta, please sign up for electricity and natural gas, or send me your bill (to William@StrathconaPower.ca) and I can run a bill comparison. But to spoil the surprise, you want to be on our floating rates! If you’ve already signed up, tell a friend!

Till next month,
— William, El Presidente of Strathcona Power

including a 932 MW center, with permits to expand to double that, in the Industrial Heartland northeast of Edmonton. By comparision, the total provincial electrical demand currently peaks at ~11,000 MW. ↩
This is approximate June retail pricing. Floating prices can and do change month to month, and vary slightly between wire areas. ↩
This is approximate May retail pricing. ↩
Annualized Recurring Revenue. Basically an assumption of annual revenue, based on last month’s topline income less last month’s regular costs (i.e. ignoring one-off costs). This combines both the retailing and the generation arms of the Company. ↩