October power rates to drop as heat eases
The wholesale electricity market is sending signals of stabilization or even a slight reduction for October’s floating rates.
The average price of a megawatt-hour in the wholesale market is set in September, five days before the end of the month, at 118.37 euros per megawatt-hour, recording a decrease of almost €10 from the average price of €129.83 in August and much lower than the July rate of €135.54 euros, which was also the highest price of the year.
The path of the wholesale price so far sets a positive mood for consumers, unless some highly unpredictable event occurs to halt the de-escalation process, since the main driver of the upward price push – high demand due to high temperatures – has gone away.
Falling temperatures pushed weekly electricity demand from September 16-22 below 1 terawatt-hour after 16 weeks. Compared to the previous week, demand fell by 8% and reached 978 gigawatt-hours, a course followed by the price of the MWh, recording a decrease of 7% compared to the previous week.
Providers are waiting to see the final wholesale price per MWh in September to announce October tariffs, although Protergia’s announcement on Tuesday appears to have discounted the de-escalation from August.
Protergia, which is the largest private supplier, announced the freezing of its tariffs in October for the fourth month in a row. Whether the government will implement the subsidy measure for households in October will also depend on the commercial policy followed by the rest of the providers, and primarily PPC. Even Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis himself, when recently announcing his message to the European Commission president on prices and the operating model of the European market, as well as the political leadership of the Energy Ministry, assured with their statements that the subsidies will continue for as long as necessary. For residential consumers it was 1.4 cents/KWh for consumptions up to 500 KWh in September and 1.6 cents/KWh in August.
Of course, given the bigger picture of the European market, wholesale electricity prices in Greece and the rest of the countries of Southeast Europe still deviate significantly from the markets in most of the continent, despite the de-escalation of the last few days.
