In Germany, the wholesale price of electricity with delivery at the beginning of next year was €90. Prices in Britain reached a record since 1999. Costs have also risen in the Netherlands and France.
Electricity prices in Europe rose as wind farms in the North Sea reduced production because of the lack of strong winds there in recent weeks, the Wall Street Journal wrote.
“It took a lot of people by surprise,” said Stefan Konstantinov, an energy specialist at analyst firm ICIS. — “If this [price hike] happens in the winter when demand rises significantly, it will become a real problem.
The cost of electricity jumped in France, the Netherlands, and Germany. In the latter, the Financial Times wrote, the wholesale price of electricity with delivery early next year reached €90 per megawatt per hour (about $106), almost double the prices at the beginning of the year.
At their peak, prices in Britain more than doubled in September and were nearly seven times higher than they were in 2020, the WSJ reports. Electricity prices in Britain last week were as high as £285 ($395) per megawatt per hour, the highest since 1999, according to ICIS.
According to National Grid, wind accounted for only 4.9 percent of Britain’s electricity generation on Sept. 6, compared with an annual average of 18 percent.
Gas and coal-fired power plants were used to compensate for the drop in production by wind power plants. At the same time, gas prices in Europe, which have been rising since the beginning of the year, broke another record. On the morning of September 13, the gas exchange price reached $727 per 1,000 cubic meters. For comparison, in June it was slightly more than $300.
