Monthly average of hourly day-ahead wholesale prices in CWE countries in 2015 and 2016
Dutch customers and businesses benefited from low electricity prices
In 2016, the average day-ahead prices for the CWE region dropped to new record lows during the first eight months of the year. This downward trend is related to a decrease in gas prices and high import volumes of solar and wind energy from Germany. Furthermore, price differences between the CWE countries were rather small.
Due to the three interconnectors between the Netherlands and Germany, imports of cheap electricity are possible. In 2016, TenneT has started construction of a fourth cross-border connection with Germany (Doetinchem-Wesel) allowing more import of (renewable) electricity and increasing security of supply. This benefits Dutch consumers and businesses directly. The average day-ahead price in the Netherlands decreased from 40.10 €/MWh in 2015 to 32.22 €/MWh in 2016, where in Germany the average day-ahead price decreased from 31.66 €/MWh in 2015 to 28.96 €/MWh in 2016.
From September to December 2016 prices increased due to a limited amount of available generation capacity, which was mainly because of the unavailability of the nuclear fleet in France and Belgium. This also caused a price split between Belgium/France and Germany/Netherlands.
Installed capacity
In the Netherlands renewable capacity increased with 1.5 GW, almost equally divided over offshore wind, onshore wind and PV capacity. Despite this significant increase of renewable capacity, the total operating capacity in the Netherlands decreased with 0.2 GW to 29.3 GW because of an even higher decrease in conventional capacity.
The decrease in conventional capacity is mainly caused by the closure of three coal-fired power plants, as result of the agreement on Energy for Sustainable Growth from 2013. The volume of mothballed capacity stayed roughly the same.
Dutch Operational Generation Capacities
In Germany the trend of increasing renewable generation capacities continued in 2016. In total about 4 GW of renewable capacity was installed in 2016, the majority of which being onshore wind.
German Operational Generation capacities
Switch from importing to exporting position in the Netherlands
Most months Belgium and the Netherlands have a net importing position, while Germany and France have a net exporting position. In October 2016, an interesting switch took place between the Netherlands and France; France became a net importer and the Netherlands a net exporter, which means export of electricity was higher than import. The switch of France was the result of temperature sensitive power demand related to electric heating in winter months in combination with a high unavailability of French nuclear power plants.
The rising electricity prices have led to more generation in the Netherlands, which exported electricity to other countries within Europe including France.
TenneT Market Review 2016: analysis of developments in the electricity market
This (and more) is published in the latest TenneT Market Review. This report describes the developments in the Western European electricity market, particularly in the Netherlands and Germany, where, as the transmission system operator (TSO), TenneT has a central role in facilitating the market. This publication provides past year’s highlights for the European electricity markets and puts the most important developments into perspective.
Download the TenneT Market Review 2016.
