All summer we have been reading and listening about the incredible successes, huge exports and multi-million profits of the Bulgarian energy industry. Not that the prices were particularly low. On the contrary, if we exclude 2022, the prices were record high. But we were comforted by the fact that the economies of Italy, Hungary and Romania regularly paid more and a significant part of the profits from electricity trade were absorbed by a handful of incredibly smart and capable Bulgarian "investors".
Yes, but - exactly according to the forecasts - the end of the fairy tale came with the first autumn rain. As can be seen from the first graph, Bulgaria is the sole leader in prices on the "Day Ahead" market for today in Europe. No, the difference is not large, but it is extremely indicative. As soon as the clouds hid the sun, we found ourselves unpleasantly unprepared. And from today on, this will happen more and more often. In addition, very soon we will turn on the heating. At home, the heat pump will work every day, which has a habit of increasing consumption by about three times. In addition, we already have an electric car in the garage that needs charging - just like an increasingly rapidly growing number of Bulgarians.
The second graph shows the daily price curve for today. It is noteworthy that the spread between night and morning is already larger than that between day and evening. A look at the current data (the third graph) shows that the batteries are charging very seriously, relying mainly on the operating lignite thermal power plants and large imports. The production of wind farms is interesting - 780 MW of installed capacity gives an average of less than 80 MW to the system. So much for how they produced a lot when there was no sun and therefore they would save us at night and in the cold. Today, over 7 GW of photovoltaics are expected to reach a peak production of 1.5 GW in 1-2 hours, meaning they are almost gone.
The price drop in such conditions is only possible if additional abundant base supply appears from somewhere. This can only happen if the AES Galabovo TPP, whose units are rusting in anticipation of the government waking up, is also connected to the system at full capacity. Unfortunately, even this will not be enough when it gets really cold.
This is the situation.