Italian Power Stays Below August Record as Cooling Demand Falls Short of Forecast
Italy's day-ahead prices remain well under the EUR 197.71/MWh record set on 2026-08-03, with demand undercutting the forecasts that drove early-August warnings.
Italian day-ahead power prices held well below their early-August peak through the week of 2026-08-10 as cooling demand fell short of expectations, analysts and traders told Montel on Thursday (2026-08-13). Hydro availability remained compressed, thermal capacity tightened in the sustained heat, and import flows stayed constrained. Demand simply did not materialise at the volumes traders had projected.4
The reference point is the record set on 2026-08-03, when Italian day-ahead power reached EUR 197.71/MWh. "The [national spot price] will stay quite high," a trader told Montel that day, forecasting that "many hours will certainly be above EUR 200-250/MWh" in the following days. Those levels were not reached.4
Italy has now endured its fourth summer heatwave, keeping cooling load elevated across the country. But elevated demand is not peak demand. The gap between forecast and outturn has been the stabilising variable, even as the supply constraints that underpinned those early-August forecasts remain in place.4
The more alarming projections came earlier in the summer. During the week of 2026-07-06, traders and analysts told Montel that Italian evening power prices could reach EUR 500/MWh in the coming weeks if forecast heatwaves coincided with import losses, low wind and fading solar output, with EUR 300-500/MWh cited as the plausible peak range. That worst-case convergence has not arrived. Yet hydro, import and thermal constraints are still present and unresolved.3
Gas remains the marginal fuel for Italian thermal generation. ICE Endex TTF front-month settled at EUR 60.29/MWh in Thursday (2026-08-13) evening trading, off 1.22% on the session, with THE M+1 at EUR 61.02/MWh in the same period. Costly gas was among the conditions that drove the EUR 197.71/MWh record on 2026-08-03; those gas costs have not retreated significantly, but without the demand surge traders anticipated, they have not produced extreme prices.4
Earlier spring risk scenarios were more severe still. During the week of 2026-05-18, analysts told Montel that Italian power prices could surge as much as 44% in Q2 if Iran-related energy disruptions intensified, with gas identified as the key upside driver. ICE Endex TTF has since settled well below the levels that scenario implied, reducing one layer of upside pressure from the summer outlook.1
Italy's solar exposure has also featured as a supply-side risk through 2026. In May, Paolo Guerrieri, energy economist at the Paris School of International Affairs, told Montel that weather-driven solar disruptions alone could push Italian day-ahead prices up by EUR 4-15/MWh — an indication of how sensitive the Italian supply mix is to multiple weather variables at once.2
The conditions for a reversal in the final weeks of August remain in place. Hydro, thermal and import constraints have not eased, and heatwave temperatures have not abated. An unplanned generation outage or a loss of a key import corridor — the scenarios traders identified during the week of 2026-07-06 as the route to EUR 300-500/MWh peaks — could shift the price balance rapidly without any increase in aggregate load. Italian day-ahead power prices for Monday (2026-08-17) delivery will be the first signal for whether demand restraint holds into the close of summer.3,4