01When does power move?
How much the price swings, month by month
Is the wholesale electricity market getting more volatile, and what kind of swing is growing?
The gap between the cheapest and dearest hour of a German day, taken as each month's median, was widest in September 2022 at €284/MWh and stood at €211/MWh in September 2026 (ENTSO-E day-ahead prices, since 2021).
Over the 12 months to September 2026, the German price fell below zero in 522 hours.
A price that swings tells a battery when to charge and a factory when to pause. It also hands every buyer the dearest hour's price when supply is short. How wide was the daily gap, and when was it widest?
Two kinds of swing
The first chart is the big swing: the gap between a day's cheapest and dearest hour, which a battery lives on. The month's median is used so one extreme day cannot set it. The gas-crisis months of 2022 hold the record in every zone shown, and the gap narrowed as gas prices fell.
The second chart is the swing that grew afterwards: hours priced below zero at midday, when solar outruns demand. A month can have a narrower daily gap and more hours below zero at once. The readings under the charts give each position its own figure for the zone chosen above. The third card reads the last 12 months hour by hour; the fourth puts a modelled gas-plant running cost beside the German monthly mean, from the Marginal Fuel view. The daily record itself, every day since 2021, is on the Spread view, and the yearly count of hours below zero is checked against the regulator's on Negative Prices.
How these numbers are made: The canonical hourly grid, Monthly price swings by zone.
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