Gas-fired power plants face hydrogen co-firing obligation

Last week, skies were mostly cloudy in the Netherlands and surrounding countries. Spot prices clearly reflected that conventional power plants were the marginal generators in the afternoon. Monday was an exception due to lower demand during the Easter holiday. A notable event occurred on Tuesday evening, when the spot price briefly spiked to 250 €/MWh.

From Saturday onward, the skies cleared and sunshine was abundant almost everywhere. This had a major impact on Sunday afternoon: spot prices in the Netherlands plummeted to as low as -190 €/MWh. In Belgium, prices dropped even further to -266 €/MWh — a clear sign of a saturated grid. Solar capacity continues to grow in most countries, while electricity demand remains largely unchanged. Import and export capacities have physical limits, causing prices to collapse whenever generation exceeds demand. On Saturday, imbalance prices dropped to as low as -1000 €/MWh at several moments. However, these 15-minute intervals were classified under regulation state 2 because many solar parks curtailed their production.
Gas prices fell last week, with the TTF front-month contract dropping 3 euros to 32.4 €/MWh — a level not seen in about a year. Coal prices also declined by 5 euros to 81.4 €/Ton. Meanwhile, CO2 prices edged up by 0.5 euros, closing at 66.4 €/EUA.

Dutch forward power prices showed mixed movements: May fell by 2.5 euros to 63.1 €/MWh, while June and July rose slightly to 71.8 €/MWh and 71.6 €/MWh, respectively.

Gas-fired plants became significantly cheaper to operate, resulting in clean spark spreads for the coming months exceeding clean dark spreads for the first time in a long while. For example, the clean spark spread for June rose by about 8 euros to around -14 €/MWh, compared to a dark spread of approximately -17 €/MWh for the same month.