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3AUG

Friday's German spark briefly broke even

2 min read
10:53UTC

At the top of the war premium the German clean spark spread printed plus EUR 4.81/MWh at 58 per cent efficiency and minus EUR 1.16 at 55 per cent. It was the only near-breakeven print of the cycle.

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EconomicAssessed
Key takeaway

Friday's near-breakeven print sets the fleet's break-even power price near EUR 126 to EUR 132/MWh.

German gas plants came within a euro or two of paying their way on 24 July, the Friday the war premium peaked. On day-ahead power at its window high of EUR 130.97/MWh, with TTF near its high and EUA carbon at EUR 83.40/tonne, the clean spark spread printed plus EUR 4.81/MWh at 58 per cent thermal efficiency and minus EUR 1.16 at 55 per cent. 1 2 It is the only near-breakeven reading this desk has calculated all cycle.

German onshore wind ran 2.97 GW that Friday, its weekly low, the same condition that drove German power to EUR 195/MWh at the end of June . 3 The CCGT fleet was called, and for a few hours it was paid for being called.

Keep the number, because it calibrates everything since. On those Friday inputs the fleet's break-even power price sits somewhere around EUR 126 to EUR 132/MWh across the efficiency band. Drop the gas price to Monday's level and that break-even falls to roughly EUR 117 to EUR 123. German day-ahead cleared well under EUR 80. So of the roughly EUR 40 to EUR 46 the spread has lost since Friday, only about EUR 5 came from the fuel side. The rest is the revenue leg, and the revenue leg answers to a weather forecast rather than to a ceasefire.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

For one day only, on Friday 24 July, a German gas power station could just about break even, or make a tiny profit, running flat out. That happened because the price of electricity was unusually high that day, at the same time as very little wind was blowing. As soon as the wind picked back up over the following weekend, that brief window closed, and gas plants went back to losing money on every unit they generated.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The near-breakeven window existed only because three inputs peaked together for one session: TTF near its cycle high, EUA at its cycle high, and German onshore wind at its weekly low of 2.97 GW, removing the cheap-renewables competition that normally caps the price gas-fired plant can capture.

Any one of those three easing, which is what happened within 72 hours, removes the condition entirely; the breakeven was never a new floor for the fleet's economics, it was three separate extremes landing on the same day.

What could happen next?
  • Meaning

    The 24 July near-breakeven print required three separate extremes (peak gas, peak carbon, weekly-low wind) to align, which is why it lasted a single session rather than becoming a sustained condition.

Sources:SMARD / Bundesnetzagentur via Fraunhofer ISE energy-charts·Investing.com
Mentions:Germany →TTF →EUA →CCGT →EDF →
First Reported In

Update #30 · Wind, not peace, sank the German spark

SMARD / Bundesnetzagentur via Fraunhofer ISE energy-charts· 27 Jul 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
This Event
Friday's German spark briefly broke even
Friday's print fixes the fleet's break-even power price, which is the number every later spread reading is measured against.
Led to
German gas plants back in profit
German gas plants had already come close to break-even at the 24 July war-premium peak before this positive spark.
Occurred 30 Jul 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.