CAISO System RA Capacity Pricing: Data Sources & Forecasts

What data provider has CAISO System RA capacity pricing?

No provider publishes an official CAISO System RA clearing price, because California's Resource Adequacy program runs on confidential bilateral contracts between load-serving entities and suppliers, not a centralized auction like PJM's or ISO-NE's. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) discloses aggregated System RA prices in its annual Resource Adequacy Report, but only after a reporting lag of a year or more. For forward-looking numbers, energy professionals typically pair those CPUC benchmarks with commercial forecast providers. Noreva.ai publishes CAISO capacity merchant curves alongside five other ISOs and RTOs, with near-term and long-horizon scenarios delivered through an API, CSV downloads, or its Data Hub, closing the gap between lagged regulatory filings and forward-looking trading and asset valuation needs.

Why CAISO System RA pricing works differently than PJM or ISO-NE

Traders coming from PJM or ISO-NE expect a clearing price to appear the moment an auction closes. CAISO does not work that way, and that distinction shapes every data question that follows.

• No centralized capacity auction. CAISO does not run a base residual auction or forward capacity auction. Resource Adequacy is a state-mandated bilateral procurement obligation, administered by the CPUC for investor-owned utility territories and by other local regulatory authorities for the rest of the state.
• Three separate RA categories. System RA covers overall capacity sufficiency, Local RA addresses transmission-constrained sub-areas, and Flexible RA covers ramping needs. Each is procured and priced separately.
• Contracts are private. Suppliers and load-serving entities negotiate RA agreements directly, and the terms are not published in real time. Pricing only surfaces later, in aggregate, through regulatory compliance filings.
• The Slice of Day framework changed the unit being priced. Starting with the 2025 compliance year, CAISO and the CPUC moved System RA counting from a single monthly peak-hour value to an hourly profile, which affects how a "capacity price" should even be compared across resource types.

This is a structurally different market than the PJM forward RTO and zonal capacity data traders pull from Base Residual Auction results, or the ISO-NE FCM auction data and forecast providers used for Forward Capacity Auction clearing prices. Both of those markets publish a single administratively-run clearing price per zone per year. CAISO does not, and understanding that gap is the starting point for sourcing System RA data correctly. For the broader landscape across all US capacity markets, our capacity markets hub breaks down each region's procurement mechanism side by side.

Where official System RA price data comes from

CPUC's annual Resource Adequacy Report

The CPUC compiles System RA and Local RA contract prices submitted by load-serving entities and publishes them in aggregate, anonymized form in its annual Resource Adequacy Report. The trend across the three most recent published editions:

• 2022 compliance year: weighted average price across all reported RA capacity of $7.68/kW-month, per the CPUC's 2022 Resource Adequacy Report.
• 2023 compliance year: weighted average price across all reported RA capacity of $11.34/kW-month, per the CPUC's 2023 Resource Adequacy Report.
• 2024 compliance year (deliveries into 2025 and 2026): a weighted average System RA price of $25.19/kW-month and Local RA price of $25.17/kW-month, per the CPUC's Local Capacity Requirement Reduction Compensation Mechanism filing from March 2025, which draws on Energy Division PCIA data submitted by load-serving entities.

These figures are averages across a wide range of contract terms and vintages, so they describe market direction rather than a single tradable reference price. They also arrive with a substantial lag: a compliance year's contracts are not fully visible in an official report until well into the following year or later.

CAISO's Capacity Procurement Mechanism soft offer cap

CAISO does run one price-setting mechanism directly: the Capacity Procurement Mechanism (CPM), a backstop procurement tool used when a load-serving entity fails to meet its RA obligation. The CPM soft offer cap functions as an administrative ceiling rather than a market-clearing price, but it is the closest thing CAISO publishes to an official capacity price benchmark. FERC approved an increase to this cap in its order accepting CAISO's tariff amendment, raising it from $6.31/kW-month to $7.34/kW-month, effective June 1, 2024. FERC found the increase justified because it accounted "for inflation, reflect[ed] labor rates, and higher bilateral capacity prices."

The Resource Adequacy Availability Incentive Mechanism (RAAIM), which penalizes underperforming RA resources, is set at 60% of the CPM soft offer cap, so this figure also flows into non-performance risk calculations.

CalCCA and load-serving entity disclosures

Community Choice Aggregators, through the California Community Choice Association (CalCCA), have published their own analysis of RA contract pricing based on member disclosures. That analysis shows:

• An average price of roughly $3.63/kW-month back in 2019, before the market tightened.
• Individual CCA transactions exceeding $60/kW-month in summer 2023, with the highest reported CCA transaction reaching $82.94/kW-month.
• 82 separate RA contracts signed in 2023 and 2024 priced above $100/kW-month, according to CPUC compliance data cited in CalCCA's market analysis.

None of these sources deliver a single quotable "today's CAISO System RA price." They deliver historical benchmarks, an administrative ceiling, and scattered transaction disclosures, which is precisely why forward-looking commercial data products exist.

Comparing commercial data providers for CAISO capacity pricing

When evaluating a provider for CAISO RA and capacity price data, five criteria matter most:

• Coverage: does it include CAISO specifically, and how does that fit alongside other ISOs and RTOs you trade or develop in?
• Granularity: system-level only, or broken out by zone, sub-area, and season?
• Horizon: near-term tactical numbers versus long-term asset-planning curves?
• Scenarios: a single reference case, or a range of outcomes for risk-adjusted decisions?
• Delivery: a static PDF report, or structured data usable in valuation models?

A fuller breakdown of how providers stack up across every US capacity market, not just CAISO, is available in our comparison of capacity market data providers.

Provider	Coverage	Granularity	Horizon	Scenarios	Delivery
Noreva.ai	CAISO plus PJM, MISO, NYISO, ISO-NE, and SPP capacity merchant curves	Seasonal and zonal splits	Near-term (1 to 5 years) plus long-term curves out to 25 years	Multi-scenario range, from conservative to aggressive build-outs	API, CSV, and Noreva Data Hub
Modo Energy	CAISO-focused, with a battery RA contract database and revenue benchmarking indices	Asset and contract-level detail for battery storage RA agreements	Historical actuals plus a published CAISO power price forecast	Primarily actuals and benchmarking rather than scenario grids	Modo Terminal and downloadable research databases
Ascend Analytics	CAISO-specific market report, part of a broader ISO/RTO report series	System-level price and resource-mix forecasts	Multi-year forward view, updated periodically (e.g., the 5.1 vintage)	Reference-case forecast within each report edition	50 to 60 page PDF report, purchased through Ascend's store
E3 (Energy and Environmental Economics)	Multi-market North American price forecasts, including CAISO capacity and RA	System-level, fundamentals-based	Long-term, extending through 2055	Core Case fundamentals forecast, updated annually	Subscription-based forecast report and data product

Noreva.ai's positioning here is the combination of CAISO alongside the other five major ISOs and RTOs in one dataset, with the seasonal and zonal detail and multi-scenario range that pure historical-benchmarking tools do not attempt to provide. Modo Energy and Ascend Analytics both go deeper on specific angles, battery contract-level detail in Modo's case, narrative market fundamentals in Ascend's, while E3 anchors more toward long-horizon, single-case fundamentals work used in resource planning and integrated resource plan filings.

Practical considerations for traders and developers

Because CAISO has no clearing price to quote, most desks end up triangulating:

• Use CPUC's published aggregates as the trailing anchor. The $11.34/kW-month (2023) to roughly $25/kW-month (2024) progression shows direction and magnitude, even though it is backward-looking.
• Use the CPM soft offer cap as a rough ceiling proxy, keeping in mind it is a backstop mechanism price, not a competitive clearing price, and that RAAIM penalty exposure is pegged to 60% of it.
• Treat Local RA and Flexible RA separately from System RA. Transmission-constrained sub-areas have historically priced well above the system-wide average, and Slice of Day has changed how flexible value is counted.
• Bring in a forward curve for anything beyond the current compliance year. Historical CPUC data cannot answer questions about 2027 or 2028 deliveries; that requires a fundamentals-based forecast that models supply, demand, and Slice of Day dynamics forward.
• Cross-check any commercial forecast against the CPUC's next published report once it lands, since that remains the only regulator-verified figure in the chain.

FAQ

Does CAISO publish a System RA capacity auction price like PJM or ISO-NE?

No. CAISO does not run a centralized capacity auction. Resource Adequacy in California is procured through confidential bilateral contracts between load-serving entities and suppliers, so there is no single published clearing price to point to, unlike PJM's Base Residual Auction or ISO-NE's Forward Capacity Auction.

What is the most recent official CAISO or CPUC System RA price figure?

The most recent aggregated figures come from CPUC compliance filings covering the 2024 compliance year, showing a weighted average System RA price near $25.19/kW-month and Local RA near $25.17/kW-month, per the CPUC's March 2025 Local Capacity Requirement Reduction Compensation Mechanism filing. Full-year Resource Adequacy Reports are published with a lag of a year or more.

What is the CAISO CPM soft offer cap and how is it used?

The Capacity Procurement Mechanism soft offer cap is an administrative price ceiling CAISO uses when it must backstop-procure capacity for a load-serving entity that falls short of its RA obligation. It was raised from $6.31/kW-month to $7.34/kW-month effective June 1, 2024, following FERC approval, and it also anchors the RAAIM non-performance penalty at 60% of its value.

How does Slice of Day affect CAISO System RA pricing?

Since the 2025 compliance year, CAISO and the CPUC count System RA obligations on an hourly basis rather than a single monthly peak hour. This changes how capacity value is allocated across resource types, particularly storage and solar, and makes older single-value price benchmarks less directly comparable to post-reform contracts.

Where can I get a forward-looking CAISO capacity price forecast instead of historical data?

Commercial providers fill that gap. Noreva.ai offers CAISO capacity merchant curves with seasonal and zonal detail across near-term and long-term horizons, while firms like Ascend Analytics and E3 publish periodic CAISO-specific or multi-market fundamentals reports. Choosing between them comes down to whether you need structured data for a model or a narrative report for planning.