Weekend power prices in France rose more than 25% day on day Friday, taking their cue from bullish gas prices as looming below-average temperatures are expected to drive demand higher against the backdrop of some nuclear plant outages.
In Friday morning trading, the French weekend price jumped to nearly a three-week high of Eur47.50/MWh, rising almost Eur10 on the day.
Previously, the weekend contract was above Friday's was during the late February cold snap, hitting Eur51/MWh on February 23, according to S&P Global Platts pricing data.
French power prices are very temperature-sensitive as a higher proportion of households have electric heating that elsewhere in Europe.
Forecaster MeteoFrance expects temperatures in France to fall dramatically over the weekend to well below the seasonal average for the two days in a "remarkable" late onset of cold conditions.
The impending cold weather led to bullish natural gas prices in Europe, which are supporting higher power prices, a trader said, adding that "renewables are up everywhere, also in France, but prices soar."
Higher renewables generation usually has a dampening effect on prices and are noted in the neighboring German market, which is currently seeing weekend contract trade close to zero.
Wind and solar generation in Germany is expected to climb to an average of around 39 GW over the weekend, while French renewables are seen to rise above 6 GW on average for the same period, spotrenewables data showed.
Despite the increased renewables in Germany, multiple nuclear outages in France are set to curtail supply, thereby lifting prices.
EDF on Friday said its 890-MW Dampierre-2 will run at reduced capacity of 610 MW over Saturday and Sunday, while generating capacity from its 1.5-GW Chooz-2 nuclear unit will drop to zero from late Friday night until Sunday night. The 1.33-GW Flamanville-1 outage that started on Thursday evening will remain on outage until Sunday night.
However, French weekend prices were at a discount to the UK counterpart on Friday as traders in the UK feared of a low storage and higher demand scenario playing out this weekend, sending the spot NBP gas prices up by 3 pence/therm on the day.
French weekend contracts were around Eur20 below the UK weekend at GBP59.50/MWh or Eur67/MWh on Friday. France being at a discount to the UK signals power to remain flowing from France into the UK.
