Day-ahead electricity prices across eastern Southeast Europe eased back towards €160/MWh for Sept. 26 delivery. Despite the lower day-ahead level, intraday prices moved from near zero to more than €250/MWh. The pattern highlighted the role of batteries and other flexible assets in capturing those price swings.
Market clearing levels for the same delivery date were about €161.2/MWh in Hungary and around €162/MWh in Romania. Bulgaria cleared at approximately €160.6/MWh, while Greece closed close to €160/MWh. The decline came after prices above roughly €213-220/MWh in several markets a day earlier.
Hourly price extremes behind lower baseload averages
The baseload averages masked larger hourly movements during the day. In Hungary and Romania, electricity prices fell to around €0.70/MWh during solar-heavy afternoon periods. Prices then rose to roughly €251/MWh later in the day.
Greek prices also showed a sharp drop during the cheapest hours, reaching about €2/MWh. In Bulgaria, the lowest traded levels were near €15/MWh. The range between low and high hours was reflected in Hungary’s three-hour pricing windows.
In Hungary, the cheapest three-hour window averaged roughly €10.7/MWh. The most expensive three hours averaged about €228/MWh. The difference between those windows was described as an increasingly important figure for market participants.
Implications for storage and dispatchable flexibility
A battery does not require consistently high prices across the full day. It depends on having sufficiently cheap charging hours and sufficiently expensive discharging hours. The Sept. 26 price profile matched that requirement.
Rapid solar expansion across Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece was linked to lower prices around midday. At the same time, limited storage and dispatchable capacity supported strong evening scarcity premiums. Pumped hydro, flexible demand and shaped PPAs were cited as gaining similar value from the volatility.
Challenges for solar merchant revenues during low-price hours
The same intraday pattern created a different outcome for solar generators. Producing during the cheapest hours can push capture prices well below daily baseload averages. That effect can weaken merchant revenues unless generation is stored or contracted differently.
The regional market was characterized as becoming increasingly bifurcated as average electricity prices fall while peak-hour value remains high. For storage investors, the distinction between low-price charging periods and high-price discharge periods was highlighted as more relevant than the baseload number alone.