RTE Settlement Revisions Unresolved as French Day-Ahead Power Climbs to €146.54

RTE Settlement Revisions Unresolved as French Day-Ahead Power Climbs to €146.54 Traders say retroactive balancing corrections by France's grid operator remain unaddressed, depressing market participation and clouding forward positioning. French day-ahead power prices hit €146.54/MWh on Friday (2026-07-17), with traders pointing to an ongoing problem at France's grid operator that has reduced participation in the balancing market and made front-month positioning harder to sustain.¹ RTE, France's transmission system operator, has faced mounting criticism since May (2026-05-21) for repeatedly issuing large post-publication corrections to electricity balancing market prices and volumes, causing participants across Europe to absorb unexpected financial losses, Montel reported. Traders described the practice as "insane." Market sources say the revisions remain unresolved.¹ The mechanism is specific. When RTE revises settlement figures after positions have already cleared, books that relied on the published prices must absorb the revision as a loss — the gap between what was initially booked and what the revised figure implies. Repeated corrections of this kind deter participation and can strip liquidity from the French intraday market, amplifying spot price swings.¹ Supply risk runs alongside the market structure issue. French short to medium-term power prices surged on Monday (2026-06-15) after forecasts for a sustained heatwave raised the prospect of reactor curtailments, analysts told Montel. High river temperatures force operators to cut output or close units to comply with thermal discharge limits on cooling systems, a constraint that falls more heavily on inland reactor sites than on coastal ones.⁵ The summer strain extended beyond France. The UK's National Energy System Operator issued a second power supply warning on Friday (2026-06-26) as soaring temperatures put European networks under pressure, an unusual occurrence for that time of year, Rigzone reported. It placed France's reactor risk within a broader pattern of summer supply stress across interconnected markets.⁶ France's position relative to other European power markets has been shifting. Spain has developed a front-year power premium of more than €3 over France in recent months. But analysts told Montel on Tuesday (2026-06-16) that France's competitive advantage may prove short-lived if it faces costly winter imports as the nuclear fleet enters outage season.⁴ ICE Endex TTF front-month climbed 4.91% to €57.51/MWh on Friday (2026-07-17), raising gas-fired generation costs across European markets. European gas prices were already elevated through much of Q1 2026, driven by cold weather and tight supply, Elenger noted in its first-quarter market review. Higher gas input costs feed through to day-ahead power markets via the marginal cost of flexible gas generation.³ France's longer-term supply framework adds another dimension. The French government's electrification strategy, presented in the week of May 11 (2026-05-11), targets a reduction in fossil fuels' share of total energy consumption from 60% to 40% by 2030. The chairwoman of Octopus Energy France told Montel that the plan risks raising consumer bills and will not fix the problem of negative prices without accompanying flexibility measures, including demand response and storage capacity.² Positioning on French baseload front-month leans modestly bullish, though conviction is thin. Supply-side signals from TTF front-month push bearish on generation cost grounds, meaning meaningful forward upside would likely require a more severe nuclear outage sequence or a sustained tightening in European gas balances.¹ If RTE issues further retroactive corrections ahead of the next period of elevated temperatures, liquidity in the French balancing market could thin further, keeping the spot-to-forward spread elevated and narrowing hedging options across the interconnected European grid.¹