POWER: French-German Day-Ahead Discount Narrows to Mid-July Low

The German and French day-ahead baseload contracts declined, with Germany leading losses amid forecasts for a sharp rise in wind output, with higher load factors also anticipated than France, while lower French nuclear availability kept losses contained.

• The German day-ahead spot settled at €39.13/MWh from €63.04/MWh on the previous day.
• The French day-ahead spot cleared at €35.68/MWh from €36.70/MWh on the previous day.
• FR-DE discount was at €3.45/MWh from a €26.34/MWh discount in the previous session.
• German wind is expected at 23.78GW, or a 37% load factor on 23 August and is expected to drop slightly to a 21% load factor, or 13.63GW, on 24 August (Sat) – opening the door to the possibility of negative power prices amid reduced demand and firm wind.
• German power demand over 24-25 is forecast at 41.7-45GW over 22-23 August, dropping over the weekend before rising to 51.2GW on 26 August, ECMWF shows.
• In France, wind forecast points to output at 6.64GW, or a 33% load factor on 23 August and will remain firm at a 31% load factor the next day – which could widen the FR-DE discount, coupled with firm nuclear availability.
• French nuclear availability was down 2 percentage points on the day at 71% of capacity as of Thursday morning, RTE data showed, cited by Bloomberg.
• The IFA 2 Tourbe-Daedalus interconnector will have no available capacity in both directions on Thursday until 15:00 CET in an unplanned outage. The halt started 22 Aug 00:16 CET.