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European Energy Markets
12MAY

TTF settles EUR 46.44 inside tight weekly range

3 min read
10:23UTC

TTF held EUR 43.4 to 47.4/MWh across the week to 4 May, settling EUR 46.44 on Monday. Month-to-date down 7.27%, year-on-year up 40.53%; the France-Germany power spread held at EUR 55.75.

EconomicDeveloping
Key takeaway

TTF held a EUR 4 weekly range while the France-Germany May-26 power spread stayed at EUR 55.75/MWh.

TTF front-month closed at EUR 46.44/MWh on the Monday 4 May session, inside a weekly range of EUR 43.4 to 47.4/MWh per ICE data 1. Month-to-date the contract is down 7.27%; year-on-year it is up 40.53%. The France May-26 power contract traded at EUR 21.80/MWh versus Germany May-26 at EUR 77.55/MWh; the EUR 55.75 spread first flagged on 28 April held through 4 May with no compression.

A tight weekly range is what European desks expect when the supply book is settled. The settled read holds across two prior anchors: the EUR 41.67/MWh six-week low on 17 April and the recovery after Iran's re-closure of Hormuz . The weekly range across 30 April to 4 May sits inside both of those reference points, and that compression is what makes the divergence with the storage-pace data sharp rather than incremental.

France's nuclear-led baseload prints at EUR 21.80/MWh while Germany's gas-and-renewables mix prints at EUR 77.55/MWh, and the EUR 55.75 spread has held without compression for nearly a week. That persistence indicates the spread is structural rather than a one-session dislocation; it tracks the underlying generation mix and the gas-to-power transmission channel rather than near-term wind or temperature noise. The TTF range and the power spread together describe a market reading aggregate supply as resolved and the bilateral generation-mix gap as durable.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

France and Germany are connected by high-voltage electricity cables. France generates a lot of cheap nuclear power, but the cables between the two countries can only carry a limited amount. As a result, electricity in France is much cheaper than in Germany right now, France's May contract is around 21 euros per megawatt-hour, Germany's is 77 euros. The 55-euro gap has held steady all week. This gap matters because it shows how fragmented the European electricity market is: cheap power in one country cannot automatically offset expensive power in a neighbouring one, and German industry pays far more for electricity than French industry does.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    German gas-to-power generation bidding at EUR 70-80/MWh marginal cost into the balancing market sustains gas demand from power generation through May, reducing the volume available for storage injection and putting indirect upward pressure on TTF spot.

  • Opportunity

    If the Aurora forecast of spread compression by late May proves correct, German solar hours lengthening from May, gas-to-power demand falls and frees up TTF supply for storage injection, narrowing the pace gap from the power-generation side.

First Reported In

Update #7 · Storage pace 0.21 vs 0.257; floor not yet met

Trading Economics / ICE· 4 May 2026
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Different Perspectives
EU carbon and storage regulators
EU carbon and storage regulators
EUA carbon broke EUR 81/tonne on 13 July as the ETS Market Stability Reserve's scheduled withdrawals met fresh fuel-switching demand from France's nuclear curtailment. Brussels' mandatory storage-fill rule kept German and French injection running regardless of the TTF swings, the mechanism working as designed four years after the 2022 shock.
Equinor
Equinor
Equinor returned its Asgard field from maintenance on 11 July, lifting Gassco's exit nominations to 319.8 mcm/day just as TTF round-tripped on Hormuz risk. The restart gave Norway spare pipeline capacity to help Europe absorb the gas rally without drawing down storage, reinforcing its role as the post-2022 swing supplier.
Germany
Germany
Germany briefly became the cheaper leg of the FR-DE spread on 12 July as French reactors went offline, while its own storage injection tripled to 723 GWh on 11 July under the EU's mandatory fill rule. Berlin's CCGT fleet absorbed the extra load at a time when EUA's climb past EUR 81 is raising its own marginal cost too.
EDF
EDF
EDF took Chooz, Golfech and Bugey fully offline on 12 July under river-cooling discharge limits, then secured a temperature exemption for Bugey to 20 July rather than wait for the rivers to cool. The government's willingness to relax the environmental ceiling shows French grid security now outweighs the permit breach when reactor hardware itself is undamaged.
Storage and injection-pace desk
Storage and injection-pace desk
EU storage sat at 51.1% on 8 July, still running below the pace needed for an 80% November target, and the JKM-TTF Asia premium of roughly USD 1.4-2.4/MMBtu was already pulling marginal cargoes east before Qatar's withdrawal compounded the gap. October's top-up remains the binding constraint, not this week's price level.
EDF / France
EDF / France
EDF added Chooz to its heat-curtailment watch list as a precaution against the second heat dome peaking 9-14 July, alongside standing warnings at Blayais, Bugey, Golfech and Saint-Alban. No output cut has been confirmed at any site as of 10 July.