Publications / Policy brief
Analysing the 2017 January price hike in HUPXpolicy briefPublished: 20 of April, 2017
  • In 2017 January, extremly high prices were observed in the Hungarian power exchange. On 11 January, the baseload power price was traded on 300 €/MWh in some hours, while in the neighboring countries – except for Serbia and Croatia – prices were floating on a standard price level
  • The reason for such high price levels is manifold: a 10 degrees centigrade lower than average temperature, shich induced a 6.5% increase in consumption, the non-planned outage of Mátra lignite power plant and Dunamenti G3, the curtailment of imports from Austria by 200 MW.
  • 2400 MW of „events” occured int he Hungarian price region on 11 January, which accounts for 15% of the 17000 MW regional consumption< /li>
  • However, the Hungarian system was far from curtailing consumers< /li>
  • During the last two weeks of January, a price hike overall Europe was present. In the future, similar weather conditions (cold spells and unfavourable wind) may result in high price periods.

The publication was supported by the REKK Foundation.