Spot prices are lowered by a combination of wind power, nuclear energy and a shaky demand.

The European wholesale electricity prices fell on Thursday due to lower demand and higher wind generation, particularly in Germany.

The market was impacted by the bearish factors, which overrode any impact from the tighter solar output. This is due to the rising temperatures expected into the next week that will increase the demand for power.

French baseload electricity for Friday fell 7.3% to 51 euros ($59.83 per megawatt-hour) at 0745 GMT.

The German equivalent contract dropped 8.4% to 86.8 Euro/MWh.

LSEG data shows that the wind power output in Germany will increase from 5.9 GW to 11 GW per day.

The French nuclear capacity has increased by one percentage point to 82%.

The demand for electricity in Germany was expected to drop to 52 GW after 53.1 GW. France would increase 200 MW, to 44.7 GW. However, the combined consumption of the two countries, Austria, and Switzerland, is set to fall by 1 GW.

The curve shows that the German baseload for the year ahead increased by 0.2%, to 87 Euro/MWh.

After a close of 63.9 GW, the equivalent French contract remained untraded.

The benchmark contract on the European carbon markets gained 1.1% to 71.16 Euros per metric tonne.

It said that the EEX bourse traded nearly 7,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 16% more, in the first half of 2025.

The volume of European power derivatives, which is the largest part of the total, totalled 4,856 tWh. This represents a 23% increase year-on-year.

According to a study by the think tank Ember, European utilities will have to increase output of natural gas and coal fired power plants 13% in the first half 2025. This will result in a significant increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

The reason for this was that the output of renewable energy sources was affected by weather, and conventional energy had fill in the gaps.

(source: Reuters)