31JUL

ACER issues first EU-wide cost dataset

1 min read

09:44UTC

ACER released the first EU-wide dataset of capex and opex parameters for generation and flexibility technologies on 30 July, covering member states on a common basis.

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EconomicDeveloping

Key takeaway

A common EU cost dataset makes rival system models comparable for the first time.

ACER, the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators, published the first EU-wide dataset on investment costs for generation and flexibility technologies on Thursday 30 July, covering capital and operating cost parameters across member states ¹.

Long-term electricity system modelling, the exercise that decides how much storage, how much gas and how much interconnection a country plans for, runs on cost assumptions for each technology. Those assumptions have come from consultancies, national ministries and technology vendors on incompatible bases, which is why two credible studies of the same system can disagree on the cheapest build-out and neither can be checked. Germany's StromVKG capacity auction, which opened on 21 July , is exactly the kind of procurement whose value depends on a cost benchmark nobody could previously cite. ACER's dataset does not settle those arguments. It moves them from the inputs to the method, where they can be examined.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

ACER is the EU agency that coordinates national energy regulators. On 30 July it published the bloc's first shared dataset of how much it actually costs to build and run different types of power generation and grid flexibility technologies across member states. Having one common set of numbers, rather than each country using its own estimates, should make it easier to compare whether a given country's support scheme for new power plants is offering a fair price.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
A shared EU cost dataset could let regulators and market participants benchmark national capacity auction terms, including Germany's StromVKG bid ceiling, against a common reference for the first time.

Sources:ACER

Mentions:ACER →StromVKG →Germany →

First Reported In

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

ACER· 31 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

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.

European Commission

Brussels holds the bloc to 90% on a flexible window while Germany, holding roughly a quarter of EU storage capacity, tracks toward missing its own lower 80% figure by 21 points. A national shortfall this size in the anchor market matters more to bloc security than the flexible timetable alone can absorb.

French power exporters and CRE

French day-ahead rose in step with Germany but by less, reopening a EUR 7-17 premium that makes northward export flows commercially attractive again after the EUR 43.09 discount evaporated in days. CRE separately authorised RTE and Enedis to buy flexibility locally, betting the coming winter's binding constraint is grid congestion rather than a shortage of firm capacity.

TTF trading desk

A visible national shortfall like Germany's 21-point gap is a directional signal, not noise, for a desk holding the summer-winter spread. TTF's flat EUR 58-60 range through this week's German price swings says the market has not yet chosen to reprice refill risk into the front of the curve.

German cavern and CCGT operators

German caverns kept buying prompt gas at TTF near EUR 58-60 through the inversion; the wind collapse to 2.4 GW then flipped the spark spread to plus EUR 29 and put turbines back in the same queue. Every day turbines win that bid, injection at a third of the 877 GWh/day pace needed falls further behind.

Slovakia

Slovakia says it dropped its hold-out on the 21st sanctions package only after Ursula von der Leyen personally signed written gas-price and supply guarantees. The Council of the European Union's own 17,238-character release on the package names neither Slovakia nor any guarantee, leaving Bratislava's account unconfirmed by the institutional record.