European Power Headed for Another Negative Weekend as May Solar Surplus Bites

European Power Headed for Another Negative Weekend as May Solar Surplus Bites Traders forecast prices below EUR -200/MWh this weekend after the EUR -500/MWh exchange floor was hit multiple times in May. European power markets have hit the EUR -500/MWh exchange floor at least twice this month, Montel reported.¹ Traders are already flagging another weekend of deeply negative prices, with surplus renewable supply and muted demand again set to converge.⁶ The floor was first breached on April 30, when Hungary recorded EUR -500/MWh from 12:45 local time as bank holiday demand collapsed against high solar output.⁶ It was hit again on 1 May, and last Sunday Germany, France and Hungary all recorded intraday prices below EUR -400/MWh, according to Montel data.^1,2 Jean-Paul Harreman, director at Montel EnAppSys, said Europe is likely to face another weekend of extremely low negative prices.⁵ He forecast prices below EUR -200/MWh, describing the coming weekend's fundamentals as aligned with the most recent severe episode — deeply negative but likely short of the exchange floor itself.⁵ Germany sits at the centre of the supply imbalance.² The country has spent $200 billion over two decades scaling up renewable capacity, and on high-sun spring weekends that investment now routinely delivers more electricity than the grid can absorb.³ Industry scales back on Saturdays, offices empty, solar peaks regardless.² The surplus turns power from something traders want to hold into something they are paying to offload.¹ The operational consequence falls on grid operators.⁴ When surplus cannot be redirected to demand centres and storage capacity is insufficient to absorb the excess, operators end up paying neighbouring systems to take output off their hands, the Economist reported.⁴ That arrangement has moved from a tail-risk clearing mechanism to a recurring line in weekend operations.² That the EUR -500/MWh floor has been hit more than once in May matters for price discovery.¹ Reaching the exchange-imposed ceiling on negative pricing means the mechanism has run out of room to signal the scale of the imbalance.¹ The question is whether interconnector capacity is adequate to move surplus before prices hit the wall, and whether the floor reflects the true cost of disposing of unwanted generation in real time.⁴ For power traders this weekend, the base case from Harreman is a sub-EUR -200/MWh print on Saturday.⁵ Negative hours confined to weekend windows keep the wider market effect manageable.¹ Any extension of deeply negative periods into weekday shoulder demand would change that calculus.¹ How many floor-level days accumulate through June will be the signal to track.² Solar intensity increases as summer approaches, and if EUR -500/MWh prints become monthly events rather than occasional ones, the pressure on baseload economics and the investment case for battery storage and expanded interconnection moves from medium-term concern toward near-term market pricing.^4,2