Update 9-16-06: As noted here, the post below is probably all wet.
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Traders don’t care about load-weighted prices. They care about prices.
In WESM’s weekly Summary Reports of the spot market they provide a recap of the daily load-wieghted average prices. But if you’re trading in the market, or thinking about trading in the market, you want to know what the straight average prices have been! Not the load-weighted average prices.
It’s important for the market to have access to straight average prices so that we can construct independent indices of daily, weekly, and monthly prices.
Don’t be misled by the WESM reports of average prices. These are not actually the average price one would receive by selling a constant amount into the market (or buying a constant amount).
These prices are skewed upward and provide a misleadingly high estimate of historical prices.