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European Energy Markets
22JUN

Same wind, two prices: solar sets gap

3 min read
13:56UTC

German day-ahead peaked at €187.30/MWh at 05:00 UTC on 31 July with wind at 3.4 GW. At 10:15 UTC on 29 July, wind sat at the same 3.4 GW and the price printed zero.

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EconomicAssessed
Key takeaway

Identical wind produced €187 and zero six days apart; midday solar explains the gap.

German day-ahead reached €187.30/MWh at 05:00 UTC on Friday 31 July, with onshore and offshore wind at 3.4 GW 1. At 10:15 UTC on Wednesday 29 July, wind sat at the same 3.4 GW and the price printed €0.00 to minus €0.06/MWh. Two prints, one wind level, and roughly €187 between them.

Solar output separates the two prints. Germany has installed enough solar capacity that around midday in July it covers most of the load left over once wind, nuclear imports and must-run plant are counted. That leftover is residual load: the slice of demand the market has to price by dispatching something dispatchable, which in Germany means a gas plant. At 10:15 there was almost no residual load to price. At 05:00 there was, and no solar to meet it.

This desk asked last week whether German power would snap back above €110 the next time wind fell toward 3 GW with TTF near €58. It did, by a wide margin. But we wrote the mechanism as wind alone, and that was wrong in a way the 29 July control print makes plain. The snapback is a night-time event, worth roughly a fifth of the daily hours, not a whole-day repricing. The negative quarter-hours France and Germany both posted on 25 July and the €187.30 print of six days later sit on nearly identical wind, and only the solar leg separates them.

The correction matters for anyone reading a wind forecast as a price forecast. Germany cleared €195/MWh on 30 June on the year's lowest wind week , but that episode combined weak wind with a heat surge lifting demand into the afternoon. As solar output falls through September and October, the hours when wind alone determines residual load widen from a pre-dawn block toward whole days, which is when a low-wind forecast starts to mean what this desk previously implied it already meant.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Germany's electricity price can look wildly different at two moments with exactly the same amount of wind power being generated, because what matters just as much is whether the sun is up. During the day, solar panels cover much of the demand that would otherwise need wind or gas, keeping prices low or even negative. At night, with no solar at all, the same wind output leaves a much bigger gap to fill, and prices spike. So it is not wind alone that decides the price; it is wind combined with whether solar is available at that hour.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The root cause is not wind variability alone; it is the interaction between wind and the hour of day relative to solar output. At 3.4 GW of wind and full midday solar on 29 July, residual load, the demand left over after renewables, was low enough to clear near zero. At the same 3.4 GW of wind but zero solar at 05:00 UTC on 31 July, residual load was high enough to clear at €187.30.

This reframes the mechanism this desk previously described as a wind story: the binding constraint on German clearing price is post-solar residual load, and any model that holds wind output constant while ignoring the solar profile of the hour in question will misprice the night-time peak.

What could happen next?
  • Meaning

    German day-ahead price spikes are better explained by post-solar residual load than by wind output alone, which changes what should be modelled when forecasting price shape.

  • Consequence

    Storage, interconnection and demand-response assets that can shift consumption or supply into night-time hours capture more value under this framing than a wind-only model would suggest.

Sources:Fraunhofer ISE energy-charts (redistributing Bundesnetzagentur SMARD under CC BY 4.0)·Fraunhofer ISE energy-charts (redistributing Bundesnetzagentur SMARD under CC BY 4.0)
Mentions:Germany →Fraunhofer ISE →France →TTF →
First Reported In

Update #31 · Caverns restart, 21 points short of November

Fraunhofer ISE energy-charts (redistributing Bundesnetzagentur SMARD under CC BY 4.0)· 31 Jul 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
Germany and France print sub-zero hours
The first sub-zero quarter-hour prices of 25 July contrast with the EUR 187.30 night-time peak of 31 July on similar wind levels, isolating solar as the swing variable.
Occurred 24 Jul 2026
Read story →
German power hits €195 on dead wind
The 30 June EUR 195 print on the year's lowest-wind week is the prior instance of the high-price-on-low-wind pattern; this event refines it by isolating post-solar residual load, not wind alone, as the driver.
Occurred 30 Jun 2026
Read story →
This Event
Same wind, two prices: solar sets gap
Post-solar residual load, not wind output on its own, is the variable that sets Germany's clearing price.
Led to
Record solar takes the German spark negative
The two-day test of near-identical wind and opposing spark signs applies and confirms the post-solar residual load correction the desk made on 31 July.
Occurred 2 Aug 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Cross-border power traders
Cross-border power traders
The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.
EDF
EDF
River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.
Gasunie
Gasunie
TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.
German gas-fired generators
German gas-fired generators
Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.
European Commission (DG Energy)
European Commission (DG Energy)
Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.
Spain's LNG terminal operators
Spain's LNG terminal operators
Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.