Prices to fall as demand falls ahead of the holiday

The German wholesale electricity price on Thursday was expected to fall over the four-day holidays due to low consumption. The indication for the next day's working day, which is April 22, was nearly half of the price paid for delivery on Friday.

The week-ahead contract in France was priced below Wednesday's closing price.

LSEG's research noted a reduction in demand during the holiday season, and that it outweighed the effects of a weakening of wind supply.

At 0805 GMT, the German baseload electricity for day 5 was not yet traded. However, its settlement at 54 euros per megawatt-hour is a significant difference from Friday's closing price of 96.0 euro/MWh.

The French baseload for the week ahead was trading in a range between 45 and 47 euros/MWh. This is compared to a previous closing of 47.5 euro/MWh.

Next Tuesday, the German wind energy output is expected to drop to 8.2 gigawatts from Thursday's 17.4 GW.

The German energy regulator is confident that the recent measures taken to improve transparency and communication about the possibility of negative prices will be reflected in Easter's price. In recent years, there have been periods of low demand with abundant renewable supply.

They said that effective grid management could help reduce disparities.

The French nuclear capacity remained unchanged at 72%.

The German power consumption is expected to be 50.0 GW Tuesday, down from the 54.6 GW recorded on Thursday. This already reflects a slowdown in Germany before the holidays. In France, the comparable figures were 44.9 GW versus 45.9 GW.

The German baseload contract for 2026 was up 0.2% at 83.3 Euro/MWh while the French baseload contract was down 0.3% at 60.5 Euro.

The benchmark European carbon permits fell 0.5%, to 66.64 Euros per metric ton.

In the first quarter 2025, Germany added over 1,000 MW of new wind energy capacity. Vera Eckert, Mrigank Dhaniwala (Reporting)

(source: Reuters)