The France-Germany day-ahead power spread inverted to France roughly €1.6/MWh above Germany on 15 June, with France near €75.8/MWh, a reversal of the €96.20 record set on 8 June when France sat far below1. Seven days earlier France cleared €96 under Germany; both legs have now converged into the mid-€70s. The €96.20 print and the heatwave-solar collapse that drove the €93.68 spread on 3 June were aberrations, and both have fully corrected.
French July power jumped roughly 10% in two days, Bloomberg reported, on the risk that a hot summer forces cooling-water restrictions on the reactor fleet, while German costs eased as gas fell2. EDF runs France's 56-reactor fleet, and curtailment risk is a recurring summer constraint when river temperatures climb. The inversion was bid by that nuclear-availability risk, not by any move in gas.
This is the most violent spread reversal of the cycle. A relative-value position long France against short Germany earned €96 on 8 June and now sits on the wrong side of a €1.6 inversion, a swing of close to €98/MWh in a week. The durable level for the spread is the mid-€70s when nuclear is available and solar is normal; the extreme prints in either direction have all been weather-driven and mean-reverted within days. A summer of cooling-water curtailment would push the inversion further the same way, which is the directional risk a cross-border power book carries into July.
