Southeast European day-ahead electricity prices remained elevated at around €300/MWh on November 4, although widening differences between individual markets pointed to increasing regional fragmentation. Higher imports and diverging national supply-demand balances contributed to the changing price dynamics, with Serbia moving lower while Albania recorded a sharp increase.
Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria formed the region’s tightest price cluster. HUPX settled at €302.31/MWh, Romania at €300.84/MWh and Bulgaria at €301.69/MWh, with all three markets recording increases compared with the previous session. Montenegro and North Macedonia remained close to these levels, at €299.13/MWh and €299.90/MWh, respectively.
More pronounced movements emerged elsewhere in the region. Serbia’s SEEPEX price declined by €12.7/MWh to €292.45/MWh, while Albania surged by €19.4/MWh to €333.03/MWh, the highest level among the observed SEE markets. Greece remained comparatively cheaper at €279.70/MWh, despite a daily increase of €12.4/MWh.
Germany traded substantially below Southeast Europe at €248.99/MWh, leaving Hungarian electricity at a premium of €53.33/MWh. Italy also remained below most regional markets, with a day-ahead price of €282.19/MWh.
Regional supply-demand fundamentals continued to support elevated prices despite a reduction in forecast consumption. Demand declined by 712 MW to 34,910 MW, while net imports increased by 483 MW to 4,244 MW, highlighting the region’s growing reliance on cross-border electricity flows.
Imports from the Austria-Slovakia direction rose to 3,142 MW, while flows from Italy into Southeast Europe increased to 1,104 MW. These developments strengthened the contribution of external supply to the regional electricity balance, even as overall consumption eased.
At the same time, regional electricity generation weakened, falling from 31,861 MW on November 3 to approximately 30,665 MW on November 4. The renewable generation mix also shifted considerably. Solar output was forecast to increase by 1,304 MW, but wind generation was expected to decline by 1,464 MW, more than offsetting the additional solar production.
Serbia provided one of the clearest indications of regional price decoupling. SEEPEX base power declined to €292.45/MWh, almost €10/MWh below Hungary, reflecting a different intraday supply-demand balance compared with neighbouring markets.
The Serbian price adjustment was particularly visible during peak hours. Peak electricity prices dropped to €316.5/MWh from €341.4/MWh in the previous session, while off-peak prices remained almost unchanged at €268.4/MWh. This suggests that the decline was primarily associated with easing peak-hour tightness, rather than a broad-based reduction across the entire daily price curve.
Albania experienced the opposite trend. ALPEX increased to €333.03/MWh, more than €40/MWh above Serbia, while the maximum hourly price reached €600/MWh at H21. The widening price differential between the two markets highlights the continued impact of transmission constraints, local generation availability and national supply conditions on electricity prices across Southeast Europe.
Forward electricity markets presented a softer outlook than the spot market. Hungarian Week 46 power increased slightly to €314/MWh, while Week 47 declined to €294/MWh and December contracts fell to €262/MWh. The Hungary-Germany Week 47 price spread narrowed by €18.5/MWh to €71/MWh.
Meanwhile, gas, carbon and coal benchmarks also moved lower, providing little indication that the latest strength in spot electricity prices was being driven by a new fuel-cost shock.
The November 4 trading picture therefore points increasingly towards regional price dispersion rather than a uniform increase in Southeast European electricity prices. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria remained closely aligned around €301-302/MWh, while Serbia moved into a lower-priced Central Balkan market segment. Greece and Italy continued to trade at comparatively lower levels, whereas Albania emerged as the region’s most pronounced scarcity market.
With Southeast Europe’s net imports exceeding 4.2 GW and Hungarian electricity maintaining a premium of more than €50/MWh over Germany, cross-border transmission capacity, wind generation availability and national electricity balances are likely to remain the key factors shaping regional price movements in the coming trading sessions.
