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German Regulator Probes Possible Abuse of Power Price Spikes

An illuminated street light near an electricity transmission pylon in a residential district in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Power prices in Europe swung in a €260 ($279) per megawatt-hour range at the weekend, almost triple the past year’s daily average, as a strong supply of wind dropped. (Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Federal Network Agency said it’s investigating allegations of market abuse in connection with recent power price spikes.

The country’s power prices rose above €1,000 per megawatt-hour this week — levels not seen since the energy crisis in 2022 — triggered by low wind generation and cold weather. That required more expensive fossil fuel-fired power plants to be put to use, driving up electricity costs.

However, more than 11 gigawatts of conventional power plant capacity was unavailable during the period and contributed to higher prices, according to Bruno Burger, an energy researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in a post on X.

German media responded to the unusual price surge by raising questions over whether the withholding of that capacity was deliberate.

“We will initiate further investigative measures if there are any relevant indications,” the Federal Network Agency said in a statement released on Friday.

Philipp Godron, program lead for power at think tank Agora Energiewende, said he did not want to speculate about the reasons for the missing production, “but the figures confirm that there is a considerable discrepancy between the reported available capacity and the actual generation of coal and gas-fired power plants.”

RWE AG said it could not have offered more power plants on the market and that accusations that it deliberately withheld capacity are unfounded. EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG also said it was not withholding capacity.

Energy companies Vattenfall AB, Uniper SE and LEAG — an entity of billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EPH Group which runs several large lignite units in the east — weren’t immediately available for comment.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.