CEE Power Prices Fall on Lower Consumption
Declining power consumption across central Europe heading into a holiday pushed day-ahead prices lower across the region on Wednesday, outweighing any impact on spot prices in Poland from a major power plant outage, traders said.
Czech electricity for Thursday delivery dipped 2.30 euros to 32.20 euros ($43.12) in the over-the-counter market, while Hungarian day-ahead prices fell 5.40 euros to 40.50 euros.
Data from Thomson Reuters Point Carbon showed forecasts for consumption falling across the region ahead of the Assumption Day holiday, observed on Friday in a number of countries.
"Assumption Day in many European countries is pushing already low consumption down," Point Carbon analysts wrote.
Further along the curve, the Czech front-month contract rose 35 cents to 33.70 euros, and Hungarian electricity for September delivery edged down 20 cents to 41.60 euros in over-the-counter trade.
The Hungarian front-year contract fell 25 cents to 43.75 euros in the OTC market, while no trades were seen of the Czech front-year contract.
The benchmark German Cal '15 power contract gained 18 cents to 35.80 euros in afternoon trade on Germany's EEX exchange.
Around the region, Poland's utilities will have nearly 5.8 gigawatts of power offline for planned maintenance on Friday, data from grid operator PSE showed.
Polish utility PGE will also shut down an 858 megawatt coal-fired unit at Belchatow for maintenance on Aug. 15 for 48 hours, according to the data.
Day-ahead prices on Poland's POLPX fell to 176.24 zlotys ($56.30) from 178.90 zlotys, with traders saying the holiday on Friday lessened the impact of the Belchatow outage.
"The impact wasn't drastic because the outage will take place during a holiday," one trader said.
Elsewhere, Bulgarian grid operator Electricity System Operator announced cross-border power capacity available for allocation in September.
The Germany-based Central Allocation Office also published the results of its monthly capacity auction to transmit electricity across borders in the CEE region in September.
Russian natural gas flows to the European Union through Slovakia via Ukraine were running normally on Wednesday, Slovak pipeline operator Eustream said on its website.
Brent crude oil bounced off a 13-month low, reversing early losses to trade back above $103 a barrel as traders started buying with one eye on potential supply disruptions in Iraq.
European Union carbon futures rose 5 cents to 6.18 euros a tonne in afternoon trading.
(1 US dollar = 0.7468 euro)
(1 US dollar = 3.1302 Polish zloty) (Reporting by Michael Kahn and Anna Koper; editing by Jane Baird)
