MADRID, 9 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The wholesale electricity market, the so-called ‘pool’, will continue this Wednesday with the trend of extremely low prices of recent days and will record up to a total of nine hours with negative prices, between 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Specifically, between those hours the hourly price will be between -0.01 and -0.05 euros per megawatt hour (MWh). In addition, there will be another two hours in which the price will be zero euros, between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., according to data from the Iberian Energy Market Operator (OMIE) collected by Europa Press.

The average pool price for this Wednesday will be 4.31 euros/MWh, with a maximum of 35 euros/MWh between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m., while the minimum will be that negative value of -0.05 euros/MWh. MWh -between 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

With this Wednesday there will now be seven days this month in which the ‘pool’ has registered negative prices in some of its hours, a fact that had never occurred until April 1.

The significant presence of renewable generation at the beginning of April, in the form of wind and solar, with a notable participation of hydraulics with the water dammed from the important rains at Easter, places the average in the first ten days of the month at 3 .68 euros/MWh.

In March, one of the lowest average pool prices in history for a month was already seen, with 20 euros/MWh, half that of the average price recorded in February and 77.5% less than in March 2023. , when it stood at 89.6 euros/MWh.

However, these negative or very low prices are not exactly transferred to the receipt of those zero euros, since there are fixed costs for the electricity consumer, due to tolls, charges and system adjustments.

Furthermore, in February, after registering an average lower than 45 euros/MWh, the ceiling set in the Royal Decree of urgent measures, electricity temporarily recovered its Value Added Tax (VAT) of 21% since March, something that will remain in this month of April.

The last Council of Ministers last year approved that the VAT on electricity would go from 5% to 10% and that this rate would be maintained until the end of 2024, as long as the condition that MWh prices in the wholesale market were met. remain high, above those 45 euros/MWh.

Specifically, the VAT would become 21% whenever the wholesale price was below that bar in the calendar month prior to the last day of billing. That is, all invoices that include consumption for at least one day in March will have VAT of 21%. Only households with the social bonus are free from this increase, since their VAT will remain at 10% throughout 2024.

Furthermore, the ‘pool’ does not exactly represent the final amount in the price of electricity for a consumer covered by the regulated tariff, since with the entry in 2024 a new method of calculating the PVPC was adopted, which incorporates a basket of prices in the medium and long term to avoid strong fluctuations, without losing the short-term price references that encourage savings and efficient consumption.

In this way, the proportion of linkage with the ‘pool’ price will be progressively reduced, to incorporate the references of the futures markets, so that these represent 25% in 2024, 40% in 2025 and 55% starting in 2026.