European electricity, explained

Open data on Europe's power markets — what a day of electricity costs, what generates it, how clean it is, and how neighbouring zones pull apart. The sharpest stories are structural and regional: start with the deep dives, then scan the eight views below. Pre-computed and static; every figure carries its source.

Deep dives — the structural stories worth your time
DE Germany North-South Grid ↗Wind piles up in the windy north while demand sits in the industrial south — so clean power gets curtailed and the grid pays to reroute it. FR France Nuclear ↗A centralised reactor fleet powers the country — and dips together for refuelling, maintenance, and, in heatwaves, warm rivers. NZ Nordic Price Zones ↗Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland already run twelve price zones — a cheap hydro north and a dear, continent-coupled south. The split Germany debates, live. UK UK Regional Carbon ↗Scotland's wind is in the north, demand in the south — when the grid can't carry it, wind is paid to switch off. How clean each region is, and what the bottleneck costs. DF Dunkelflaute ↗The cold, dark, windless spells when wind and solar generate almost nothing for days and the grid leans entirely on firm power and imports. The worst one, auto-detected. ST Storage ↗The batteries that charge when power is cheap and discharge when it's dear — living off the daily price spread, and arriving fast. The optimistic answer to volatility. IB Iberian Blackout ↗28 April 2025: the day Spain and Portugal went dark. What the grid data recorded, how it was restored, and what the official report found — no asserted cause.
The value layer — what the grid was worth, and who paid
CP Capture Price ↗What a megawatt-hour of solar actually earns — and why it falls as more of it floods the same midday hours. NP Negative Prices ↗When power costs less than nothing: how many hours a year, when they cluster, and how long each spell lasts. FX Flexibility ↗What a shiftable load — an EV, heat pump or battery — saves by charging in the cheapest hours. An honest upper bound. LO Locational Signal ↗The north–south congestion the single bidding zone hides — shown as evidence, with the split debate as a cited range, no simulated price. RW Retail Wedge ↗Your bill, decomposed: wholesale energy vs grid charges vs taxes and levies — and how the wedge moves over time. CA Capacity & Adequacy ↗Paying to keep firm power on call for the windless days — a provisional, not-yet-law capacity cost, beside a Dunkelflaute stress read. MF Marginal Fuel ↗Why the price is what it is: a modelled gas marginal cost against the day-ahead price. A model, not a measurement. IC Industrial ↗How German industrial power prices compare with France, Spain and Norway — and where Wattlas honestly stops. SC Storage Cannibalization ↗How more batteries thin the very spread they feed on — an illustrative, modelled curve (a section of the Storage view). C€ Curtailment in € ↗What the curtailed wind would have been worth — a labelled estimate, not the billed compensation (a section of the Curtailment view).
Zones
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1 · Pulse — the daily rhythm

The average price at each hour of the day. The midday dip is solar flooding the market; the evening peak is solar fading while demand stays high.

€/MWh, local time, averaged over the whole period. Source: ENTSO-E.

2 · Spread — the daily gap

The gap each day between the cheapest and the most expensive hour — the swing that batteries and demand-shifting live on.

3 · Mix — what makes the powerFull view ↗

What actually generates the electricity, fuel by fuel. France leans on flat nuclear; Germany rides volatile wind and solar.

Stacked average generation by fuel. Gaps render as breaks, never fabricated zeros. Source: ENTSO-E.

4 · Mismatch — residual load

The demand left for conventional plants after wind and solar have done their bit. It dips midday and peaks in the evening — which is why prices peak then too.

Residual load = demand − wind − solar (GW); the shaded band is covered by wind+solar. Hour-of-day average over the whole period. Source: ENTSO-E.

5 · Divergence — geographyFull view ↗

How far neighbouring zones' prices drift apart. When an interconnector fills up, the cheaper side can't rescue the dearer one and prices decouple.

6 · Carbon — how clean each hour is

Grid carbon intensity falls as wind and solar rise — and France's nuclear reads far cleaner than coal-heavy hours.

7 · Curtailment — clean power the grid can't moveFull view ↗

Wind and solar curtailed when the grid can't absorb or move it — a cost of Germany's north–south bottleneck.

Green bars = curtailed renewable energy (MWh/day); red line = negative-price hours that day. Germany. Source: netztransparenz.de.

8 · History — the long viewFull view ↗

Years of daily spread at once. Drag across the chart to zoom; fold every year onto twelve months; read the year-on-year trend. Germany; not affected by the window control.