Czech, Slovak Day Ahead Fall; Hungary Up

Forecasts for rising solar supply crimped Czech and Slovak day ahead power on Wednesday but uncertainty over an outage at the PAKS nuclear power plant drove Hungarian prices higher, traders said.

On regional exchanges, Czech and Slovak electricity for Thursday fell nearly 7 percent to 35.42 euros ($46.66) per megawatt hour while day ahead on Hungary's HUPX exchange jumped 27 percent to 48.88 euros.

Hungary will halve the output of one of its four reactors at the PAKS nuclear power plant for much of Thursday to deal with a mechanical problem.

"The price in Hungary was much higher because many in the market think it's possible the outage could go on longer," one trader said.

Data from Thomson Reuters Point Carbon also showed forecasts for wind generation in Germany steady at 1.5 gigawatts for Thursday but pegged solar output rising about 2.5 gigawatts to just under 6 GW.

Further along the curve, the Czech Cal '15 declined 5 cents to 34.75 euros and the Hungarian front year dipped 5 cents to 43.80 euros on the Prague-based Power Exchange Central Europe.

Around the region, the benchmark German Cal '15 contract slid 4 cents to 35.60 euros in afternoon trade on Germany's EEX exchange.

Poland's utilities will have nearly 3.8 gigawatts of power offline for planned maintenance on Friday, data from grid operator PSE showed. Day ahead on the POLPX exchange ticked higher to 197.33 zlotys ($61.94) from 195.76 zlotys.

Czech electricity producer CEZ will reconnect Unit 1 of its Temelin nuclear power plant to the grid during the weekend, after a scheduled outage.

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.

Bulgaria's interim government said it had set up an energy board to ensure that badly needed multi-billion euro projects in the poorest European Union state are transparent.

Brent crude oil rose towards $103 a barrel, recovering from a 14-month low hit last week as traders monitored maintenance work in the North Sea, although healthy global supplies limited gains.

European Union carbon futures were steady at 6.32 euros a tonne in afternoon trading.

(1 US dollar = 0.7591 euro) (1 US dollar = 3.1859 Polish zloty)

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by David Evans)