Negative prices — Europe
Number of hours with a negative price on the day-ahead electricity market in Europe, by country and by year. Sources: ENTSO-E Transparency Platform via FfE, ACER, CRE.
Last updated: June 2026 · data snapshot 2022-2024
What is a negative price?
A negative price means that producers pay to inject their electricity into the grid instead of being paid for it. This happens when supply (solar + wind + baseload nuclear) exceeds demand at a given moment, and the cost of shutting down inflexible plants is higher than the cost of accepting a negative price.
Scope: this page covers the day-ahead market (J-1 auctions, prices set the day before for each hour of the next day). The intraday market can also see negative prices, but the data shown here concerns the day-ahead market only, which is the reference market for most solar contracts.
Solar impact: negative-price hours lower the capture price (the average price captured by solar), erode PV producers revenue and create a cannibalisation risk — the more solar there is, the more the price drops during sunny hours.
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1. Observed data — negative-price hours by country
Observed dataNumber of hours with a day-ahead price strictly below 0 €/MWh, per bidding zone, over the full calendar year. Data from the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform, compiled by FfE.
⚠ Scope: each row = 1 bidding zone (≈ country). Do not sum the rows together.
| Country / zone | 2024 | 2023 | % of time (2024) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finland | ~725 | ~470 | ~8% | FfE 2024, Fig. 3 |
| Sweden (SE1-SE2) | ~650 – 720 | — | ~7% | FfE 2024, Fig. 3 |
| Netherlands | ~458 | — | ~5% | FfE 2024, Fig. 3 |
| Germany (DE-LU) | ~459 | ~301 | ~5% | FfE 2024, Fig. 3 |
| Belgium | ~404 | — | — | FfE 2024, Fig. 3 |
| France | 361 | 147 | ~4% | RTE Bilan electrique 2024 |
| Norway | ~231 | — | — | FfE 2024, Fig. 3 |
| Spain | first occurrences | 0 | < 1% | FfE 2024, Fig. 3 |
| Italy | 0 | 0 | 0% | Regulation prohibits negative prices |
Values marked ~ are read off the FfE charts (Figure 3) and may vary by ±10 h. France data come from RTE Bilan electrique 2024.
2. Context — aggregated European trend
ContextEvolution of the total number of negative-price hours (all zones combined) and the share of time across the EU.
ℹ Scope: EU aggregate (sum of all bidding zones). Not directly comparable to the per-country rows in Table 1.
| Indicator | 2024 | 2023 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total hours price < 0 (all EU zones) | 4,838 | 2,442 | ACER MMR 2025 |
| Share of time (EU average) | ~4% | ~2% | ACER MMR 2025 |
| Countries with a negative record in 2024 | 21 / 25 analysed | — | FfE 2024 |
| Extreme price floor | — | −500 €/MWh | FfE 2023 (DE/HU/NL, 2 Jul 2023) |
Sources & methodology
Hour counting
- Scope: day-ahead market only (J-1 auction). Intraday prices are not counted.
- Threshold: price strictly < 0 €/MWh. Hours at 0.00 €/MWh are not counted as negative.
- Granularity: per calendar hour (8,760 h/year, 8,784 in a leap year). Some zones use 15-min blocks — aggregated by hour.
- Price zone: per bidding zone. Germany is coupled with Luxembourg (DE-LU). Sweden has 4 zones (SE1-SE4).
Key terms
- Cannibalisation: the effect whereby rising solar capacity lowers the electricity price during sunny hours, eroding PV producers revenue.
- Capture price: the weighted-average price at which a solar producer actually sells its electricity (≠ the annual average day-ahead price).
- Bidding zone: a geographic area with a single day-ahead price. Often matches a country, except Sweden (4 zones), Italy (6 zones), Norway (5 zones).
Tags
- Observed data = values measured on the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform, compiled by FfE or RTE/CRE.
- Context = European aggregates and framing trends (ACER, FfE).
Sources used
- FfE (2025) — "European day-ahead electricity prices in 2024". Forschungsstelle fuer Energiewirtschaft, Munich. ENTSO-E Transparency Platform data. ffe.de
- FfE (2024) — "European day-ahead electricity prices in 2023". ffe.de
- ACER MMR 2025 — Key developments in European electricity and gas markets. Market Monitoring Report. acer.europa.eu
- RTE (2025) — Bilan electrique 2024, Prices section. rte-france.com
- CRE (2024) — Note on the negative-price phenomenon, November 2024. cre.fr
- ENTSO-E — Transparency Platform (raw day-ahead data). transparency.entsoe.eu
Known limitations
- FfE figures are read off charts (Figure 3) — exact values may differ by ±10 hours.
- Italy and Serbia regulatorily prohibit negative prices — 0 h does not mean there is no surplus.
- Not all 2023 per-country data are available in the FfE source (some blank cells).
- Counting by bidding zone can differ from counting by country when a country has several zones.