Economica.net – The price of spot electricity fell on the Romanian market in April as well, for the third month in a row, reaching below the threshold of 60 euros/MWh. What records were broken

The average day-ahead market price (DAM) was, in April 2024, 298 lei/MWh, according to our data, market operator OPCOM will probably present the figure in a few days.

Given that the average price for March 2024 was 315 lei/MWh, we therefore have, for the fourth month of the year, a decrease of 17 lei/MWh, or about 5%, from one month to the next.

April’s decline follows a decline in March, when the price fell 9% from February. And in February the average market closing price was down 25% from January, which came after an 8% increase in January from December, but then we also had a base effect: December 2023 a was a month with milder temperatures and lower consumption – there were more days off, lower consumption and there were also time slots with negative prices.

Compared to the day-ahead market price of a year ago, the price in April 2024 decreased by 38%, while the price in April 2023 was 481 lei/MWh.

As can be seen, the average PZU price has dropped a lot and below the level of 400 lei/MWh, the price regulated by the MACEE centralized procurement mechanism, at which producers (minus renewables) sell 80% of the available energy to suppliers with final customers and to distribution and transmission network operators.

A characteristic of the month of April was the negative hourly prices that were recorded on all weekend days – except for one day – during the daytime hours with the sun in the sky, i.e. when the Romanian and European networks received massive amounts of energy electricity from photovoltaic sources. For now, they only appear on weekends and holidays, when consumption is lower, but market watchers say that as solar PV develops, it’s only a matter of time before we see hourly prices in the middle of the day and on weekdays.

Moreover, from this point of view, April 2023 was a month of negative price records in the entire history of the Bucharest energy market. After the price broke four historical minimum thresholds – or negative maximum – on April 28, the highest negative price level in the history of the market was recorded: minus 323 lei/MWh.

The electricity spot market in Bucharest is coupled by price with those of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and, more recently, with those of Austria, Poland and Germany. In October 2021, the spot market in Bucharest was coupled, through the same mechanism, with the market in Bulgaria.