Belgium electricity spot "hits new record" amid heatwave

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Nearly two months ago I made an article describing really low electricity prices in Europe of around -500 EUR/MWh. Last wednesday records are being hit on the other side, with Belgium taking the cake at 1038.25 EUR/MWh. It makes what I considered high ~5 years ago(189.25 EUR/MWh) look like a joke.

It was during a heatwave when I wondered what the electricity prices were going to be, and they were pretty big, with the peak often at 20:45.

Poland, known for electricity generation by thermal coal, recording around 700 euros. Germany 747, the Netherlands 902, West Denmark 786, and France with plenty of nuclear peaking at 19:45 with 433 EUR/MWh. UK had high prices as well but I forgot to take a screenshot.

Lots of additional load because of air conditioning with high temperatures as the sun going towards sunset, I thought. With the high pressure area there was also not much electricity coming from wind(around 20% of installed capacity of the Netherlands according to electricitymaps).

I looked it up, and apparently this was a record accoring to energy news source montel. While I expected high prices, I did not expect an all-time record, I'd expect a record in a dunkelflaute during winter.

Also according to pv-magazine with gas power plants output(with same gas input) is reduced by 0.5-0.9% for every degree celcius above 30 °C.

Worth noting that nuclear power plants also don't really like additional heat, I assume coal has the same problem and also much of electric stuff in general operates less efficiently, from your refrigerator to solar panels. An exception is probably your airfryer.

With greenhouse gas emissionsstill ongoing due to burning fossil fuels and major livestock agriculture, these events will probably get more likely in the future. But who knows perhaps with a different energy mix the swings are more managable.