June’s unprecedented heat wave is pushing European energy prices into 2022 crisis territory as demand for air conditioning peaks amid low nuclear and wind power output.
With temperatures forecast to rise on Wednesday night, buyers had to bid over €1,000 per megawatt-hour on the Belgian day-ahead market to secure supplies.
While the impact is mostly limited to dealers, retailers and industrial consumers, who typically have complex protection strategies, any Belgian with solar panels, a smart meter and a real-time price contract will have to pay through the nose to charge their EV or cool off once the sun goes down.
Joannes Laveyne from the Electricity Laboratory at Ghent University said the increase could be a “new record energy price for Belgium”. The reasons he gave were “increased consumption due to air conditioning” amid low wind and nuclear production.
An almost identical series of dips and dips was seen across most of Europe.
On Tuesday, France had to shut down one of its nuclear power plants because of high temperatures that limit the replacement of cooling water.
“Prices will be more than €700 tomorrow night.” German energy expert Lion Hirth warned.
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