A Summit Since 2022, Built on Gas

The average day-ahead price on the French market settled at €166/MWh in October 2026, against €143/MWh in September — a gain of roughly 16% in one month. That is the highest level since the 2022 crisis. The average daily spread between the most expensive and cheapest hour climbs to €179/MWh, a sign that the rise in the average level comes with considerable intraday dispersion.

Gas Sets the Tempo

The main driver is natural gas. TTF came close to €100/MWh in late October, nearly three times its level at the start of the year. Two factors feed this tension: Qatari LNG supplies remain disrupted, and European storage sits around 75%, against an average of about 86% at this time of year. With winter approaching, Asian competition for liquefied gas cargoes adds further pressure.

The transmission mechanism is classic. In countries where gas holds a large share of the mix and frequently sets the marginal price — Germany, Italy and the UK — any increase in the fuel's cost feeds straight through to the power price.

A French Shield That Is Thinning

France is not, in principle, the most exposed to this mechanism, thanks to its low-carbon fleet. But that fleet has shrunk. Against October 2025, nuclear availability is 3.8 GW lower and hydro 1.6 GW lower — 5.4 GW of low-carbon capacity gone. Drought is the main cause: the Chooz plant stayed offline for much of the month because of low flow on the Meuse. Add the outage at Flamanville 3, in full inspection since late September and unavailable all winter.

Gas-fired output offsets only part of the gap, with a 0.7 GW increase. France's export balance — the difference between production and consumption — falls from 11.6 to 7.6 GW, a drop of about one-third. The consequence is direct: interconnectors with neighbours are less often saturated, and French prices align more closely with those of Germany, Italy and the UK. The country thus loses part of its ability to decouple its price from gas.

What Prices and Flows Show Among Neighbours

Open data for 30 October confirm a high price level outside France. Day-ahead reaches €250.85/MWh in the Czech Republic, €254.14/MWh in Switzerland, €250.56/MWh in the Danish DK-1 zone and €211.19/MWh in Portugal. These values, covering a single day, are about one and a half times the French monthly average: the comparison is indicative, not rigorous, but it illustrates a tense regional environment.

The Finnish zone is the exception, at €77.51/MWh, a reminder that the rise is not uniform and that local production conditions matter.

On the gas side, physical flows on 30 October show intense activity at the German-Dutch border: the VIP TTF-THE-H point records 482.9 million kWh per day on entry and 180.8 million on exit. The Emden terminal, on the Norpipe side, shows 402.5 million kWh per day on entry the same day, and Tarvisio (AT-IT) 144.4 million. Conversely, no physical flows are recorded at Mallnow (PL-DE Yamal) or at VIP Waidhaus (CZ-DE) over those two days. The 31 October figures are markedly lower (77.6 million kWh per day on entry at Emden); they should be handled with caution, as they may reflect incomplete data rather than a genuine pullback, especially since the Zevenaar entry is not reported.

Wind Breaks Prices, Storage Absorbs the Volatility

The picture is not one-way. Each time wind output exceeded roughly 11 GW in October — notably 8-10 and 21-25 — prices fell to zero or near zero for several hours. Prices are generally high in the morning and evening, lower in the afternoon: the system oscillates between gas scarcity and wind abundance.

That amplitude benefits batteries, which buy low and sell high. Since the start of the year, the average spread has reached €146/MWh, up 51% on 2025 — nearly three times the levelised cost of storage, estimated at around €50/MWh. Over ten months, the revenue of a battery doing nothing but spot arbitrage already exceeds that of all of 2025 by 50% and has doubled against 2024. The effect is mechanical: the wider the gap between expensive and cheap hours, the larger the arbitrage margin.

The Limits of the Reading

Several caveats are in order. Comparisons between the French monthly average and single-day prices in other zones remain approximate. The commodity price and inflation expectation series mentioned in the analysis file cannot be used here, for lack of supplied data: the TTF level therefore rests on a single order of magnitude. Finally, part of the factors is cyclical: weather-related outages have been lifted, even though the nuclear fleet should remain less available than the previous winter, and Flamanville 3 will stay unavailable. Two months also remain to establish the annual tally of storage revenue.

What to Retain

The available facts support a clear reading: European gas tension, fed by disrupted LNG and storage eleven points below normal, has passed through to electricity, and France — weakened by drought and the Flamanville 3 outage — has been less able to shield itself. That does not allow forecasting the winter's trajectory, which will depend on LNG availability, storage levels and the return of low-carbon capacity. It is established, however, that volatility has become a revenue pool for storage.

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence and verified by our editorial team.