Morning edition · Tuesday, 3 November 2026
316 gigawatt hours of gas on the day gas got cheaper, and €154.65 for next year
Monday's full ledger is in. Germany burnt more gas, not less, and paid above €250 for a sixth day running. The forward market is quoting a calmer 2027.
Tuesday’s power is priced, and the streak holds. The day-ahead auction set an average of €252.85 per megawatt hour for Germany and Luxembourg on Tuesday 3 November, SMARD’s figures show1. That is the sixth delivery day in a row above €250, after €314.85 on Thursday 29 October, the highest daily average of the year so far1.
Line chart of the daily average German-Luxembourg day-ahead electricity price from 1 September to 3 November 2026, in euros per megawatt hour. It reaches a September high of €256.55 on 14 September, falls to €30.12 on Saturday 24 October and €13.12 on Sunday 25 October during the storm, then climbs to €314.85 on Thursday 29 October, the highest daily average of 2026 so far. Every delivery day since has stayed above €250: €268.62 on Friday 30 October, €251.42 on Saturday 31 October, €255.91 on Sunday 1 November and €259.31 on Monday 2 November. The latest value is €252.85 for delivery on Tuesday 3 November.
Source Bundesnetzagentur | SMARD.de, day-ahead price DE-LU (filter 4169), delivery days 1 Sep to 3 Nov 2026, retrieved 3 Nov 2026 · CC BY 4.0. Bundesnetzagentur | SMARD.de, market data. CC BY 4.0.
Data (CSV) · SVG · PNG
Latest values as a table
| Date | Day-ahead DE-LU |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-29 | 314.85 |
| 2026-10-30 | 268.62 |
| 2026-10-31 | 251.42 |
| 2026-11-01 | 255.91 |
| 2026-11-02 | 259.31 |
| 2026-11-03 | 252.85 |
Monday burnt more gas, not less. Yesterday European gas prices fell sharply as Washington signalled diplomacy with Iran and a cold snap dropped out of the forecasts, power2market reported2. The gas plants did not notice. SMARD’s provisional figures for the whole of Monday show 316.3 gigawatt hours generated from natural gas, against 282.6 on Sunday1. The reason was the working week: grid load rose to 1,401.6 gigawatt hours from 1,150.2 on Sunday1. Desk arithmetic: gas covered about 22.6% of Monday’s load.
The wind came back, but only at sea. Offshore wind produced 121.8 gigawatt hours on Monday, up from 15.1 on Sunday and 3.5 on Saturday; onshore turbines managed 73.7, slightly less than Sunday1. Desk arithmetic: all wind together covered about 14% of Monday’s load. Solar added 80.5 gigawatt hours, the lowest of the past four days1. These figures are provisional and will be revised1.
Next year is quoted lower. On the futures market, German baseload power for delivery across 2027 fell 5.7% on Monday to €154.65 per megawatt hour, and gas for 2027 to €75.75, power2market reported2. Desk arithmetic: next year’s power is priced about 39% below today’s day-ahead average. That is not a forecast for your bill. It is what buyers and sellers will commit to now, and it is the price at which suppliers hedge the contracts they sell you. Nothing here is investment advice.
What to watch
A cheaper fuel does not mean less of it is burnt. The weather decides how much; the price only decides what it costs.
Sources
- Market data: day-ahead price DE-LU (daily and hourly), grid load and realised generation (natural gas, lignite, wind onshore, wind offshore, solar), 30 October to 3 November 2026 — Bundesnetzagentur / SMARD.de, retrieved 03 Nov 2026, 05:20 CET.
- p2m daily: Gas und Strom geben massiv nach — power2market, 02 Nov 2026, 15:53 CET.
Every figure in this piece traces to a source above or to the desk’s own arithmetic on those sources, marked as such. Quotations are short and attributed. Spot an error? Write to the desk; corrections are logged on the method page.
Commentary for information only. Not investment, legal, tax, medical or political advice. Not an offer or solicitation. Analysis may be incomplete or wrong. Charts show published public data, not a trading feed; binding numbers live with the institutions that publish them.