Spot prices expected to rise due to falling renewable energy supplies

The strong decline in wind and solar energy supply across the region is expected to exert bullish pressure on spot contract prices on Monday, while three unplanned outages and two planned ones will reduce French nuclear availability.

LSEG data shows that the German and French baseload power prices for Monday were not traded by 0923 GMT.

Riccardo Paraviero, LSEG analyst, says that the drop in renewable energy supply will increase residual load on Monday.

He said, "Our pricing model predicts that Germany will resort to net imports on both Saturday and Monday."

LSEG data indicates that the German wind output is expected to drop by 19.4 gigawatts to 4.2 GW while French production was predicted to halve at 1.9 GW.

The data also showed that the German solar power supply is expected to decline, with a loss of 3.2 GW and a gain of 10.6 GW.

The French nuclear capacity dropped six percentage points, to 71% total, as two reactors were offline for planned maintenance and the Dampierre 1, reactor was unplanned. Flamanville 3 also extended its outage.

Operator EDF reported that Dampierre 1 was taken offline on Thursday night due to a failure in a module used for regulating temperature of the primary loop.

LSEG data shows that power consumption in Germany will fall by 1 GW Monday to 53.3 GW. In France, demand is expected to decrease by 2.7 GW at 40.9 GW.

The curve shows that European forward baseload contracts have fallen, in line with lower gas, oil, and carbon.

The German power contract for 2025 was down by 1.3% to 58.95 Euros/MWh, while the French baseload contract fell 0.6% at 78.10 Euros ($89.15).

The benchmark contract on the European carbon markets fell by 0.1%, to 62.04 euro per metric ton. $1 = 0.8760 Euros (Reporting and Editing by David Goodman).

(source: Reuters)