Average spot electricity prices in Europe were in October more than 4 % lower than in the previous month. In Poland, wholesale electricity prices on this market fell even more sharply and approached the EU average, according to an analysis of average energy prices in October prepared by Energy Solution.

On the SPOT market this month, an average of EUR 90.49 was paid for 1 MWh in the European Union. This is more than 4 % less than in September. In Poland, the price in September was EUR 94.92. It fell by as much as 14 % month-on-month.

“Mainly due to above-average wind generation, October allowed the Polish spot market to be close to the average of the analysed zone and this is a situation not observed for a long time. The spot price of October was significantly lower than the weighted average of forward contracts for this period (424 PLN/MWh spot, 483 PLN/MWh weighted average of forward contracts)”, comments Krzysztof Mazurski of Energy Solution.

The prices of energy carriers including hard coal and natural gas, as well as emission allowances, behaved ambiguously during the period. By ARA index, hard coal cheapened by 9 % for 2024 contracts and by 6 % for monthly products.

After a very violent first part of the month, dominated by the Hamas attack on Israel and the failure of the Estonia-Finland gas pipeline, which remains unexplained to this day, natural gas was impacted by a very favourable fundamental situation and ended the month up +4 % for both annual and monthly contracts. Emission allowance prices, on the other hand, have been gradually declining, down 2 % over the last month. They remain under pressure from the industry situation across Europe. But also, the growing impact of renewable generation in the mixes of individual countries in the zone.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński