Its price reduction is close to 20% current on the Energy Exchange for the first half of March, and compared to December, the decline is close to 55%.

The decrease in wholesale prices is expected to be reflected in electricity tariffs for April, which will be announced tomorrow Monday by suppliers, but without significant changes for consumers, since the final prices they pay are formed by subsidies throughout the crisis in 15 -16 minutes per kilowatt hour. Thus, lower wholesale prices mean less funding will be needed to subsidize consumption.

According to the Energy Exchange, the average price of electricity in March (until last Friday) is 125.73 euros per megawatt-hour against 156.24 euros in February (a decrease of 19.5%) and 276.89 euros in December (a decrease of 55 %).

Price de-escalation is driven by a number of factors such as:

• Increasing participation of renewables in the energy mix, driving down prices as renewables crowd out more expensive generation, coupled with relatively weak weather-driven energy demand. It is characteristic that last Monday and Tuesday, with close to 50% participation of RES in covering the load, the wholesale segment fell below 100 euros per megawatt-hour.
• Decrease in world prices for natural gas, which last week fell to almost 40 euros per megawatt-hour, while during the crisis they exceeded 320 euros.
• A mild winter, securing needed natural gas supplies for Europe after Russian supplies cut off, and keeping natural gas inventories high at the end of the winter are some of the reasons why global prices have fallen.

As spring approaches, and to avoid another unexpected development, the attention of markets and governments will be turned to ensuring adequacy and, if possible, keeping prices low next winter.

^{Source: RES-IPE}