German power: Rising renewables output pushes down prompt power prices

London (Platts)--3 Sep 2015 724 am EDT/1124 GMT

German day-ahead power contracts posted day-on-day falls during Thursday morning trading as renewable infeed is forecast to pick up Friday, and then wind generation is forecast to surge over the weekend, pushing down Saturday and Sunday prices too.

Conventional generation is set to remain unchanged, with an anticipated reduction in demand adding a further bearish tone to Friday power contracts.

At Platts 11:00 am London time close, day-ahead baseload and peakload power contracts were last seen trading at Eur34/MWh and Eur36/MWh respectively, Eur6.40 and Eur9 lower than Wednesday's assessed price for power delivered Thursday.

The weekend contract was seen trading at Eur17/MWh, down Eur1.50 on Wednesday's closing price and Eur11 below where it was trading at the start of the week as high winds are set to hit Germany on Saturday and Sunday.

Exchange traded day-ahead power closed below the OTC market, with baseload settling at Eur33.02/MWh and peakload at Eur34.61/MWh on EPEX spot.

Wind generation in Germany is forecast to rise to more than 7.5 GW during baseload hours Friday, data from spotrenewables showed, before rising to 16 GW both Saturday and Sunday, a trader said.

Peakload solar infeed is also set to increase on the day, up to more than 10 GW Friday before fading below 8 GW over the weekend.

Conventional generation is forecast unchanged Friday, with combined hard coal and lignite capacity just below 30 GW and nuclear unchanged above 10.5 GW, EEX transparency data showed. No sizable capacity reductions are planned for the weekend.

Germany is set to be a net exporter of 36.6 GWh of power to its Central Western European neighbors using the flow-based market coupling system Friday, up from 6.2 GWh Thursday, data from CASC.EU showed.

The Netherlands is set to be the main recipient of German power Friday, with 25.3 GWh forecast to flow across the Dutch border.

France will be a net importer of 11.3 GWh of power, the data showed.

 

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