Daily guide · NO5 · 2026-07-23

Negative-price watch Norway Bergen: this week's floor, and what's ahead

All numbers computed from the week's published auction results at publication and frozen — this article is an honest snapshot, not a page that rewrites itself. Reproduce via the API.

Despite the negative-watch framing, Bergen gave no reason for alarm this week. The lowest print landed at 87.35 EUR/MWh on 19 July, hour 15 — a floor that sits comfortably clear of the zero line. There were no negative-price hours over the week, and not a single hour dipped below 10 EUR/MWh.

For readers positioning around downside risk, that is a quiet signal rather than a warning. The modelled probability of a negative price over the next seven days is 0, consistent with what the week actually delivered. In context, Bergen has recorded 3 negative periods year-to-date, so the mechanism exists — it simply did not activate this week.

The concrete takeaway: with the floor holding above 87 EUR/MWh and zero sub-10 hours, there is no immediate case for defensive hedging against negative pricing in this zone. Keep the 3 year-to-date periods in mind as evidence the tail is real, but treat the coming week as a low-risk window on current data.

When wind and solar produce more than a zone can consume or export, the day-ahead auction clears below zero — producers literally pay consumers to take power. Negative prices went from curiosity to structural feature across Europe, and for anyone with flexible load or storage they're the most interesting hours of the year. Here's where NO5 stands.

87.35

this week's floor (€/MWh), 2026-07-19 at 15:00 local

0 / 0

hours below €0 / below €10 this week

negative delivery periods in 2026 so far (NO5)

The forward view

Our negative-price risk model (Brier-scored daily against climatology — record on /accuracy) currently puts the peak probability of a sub-zero period in NO5 over the next 7 days at 0%. That number updates daily via GET /v1/risk/negative/NO5 — a 14-day calendar of per-15-minute probabilities.

Never miss one again

The useful pattern isn't watching a dashboard — it's a webhook that fires when tomorrow's auction clears negative anywhere in your zone:

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"event": "negative_prices", "zone": "NO5", "url": "https://your-app/hook"}' \
  https://voltcast.com/api/v1/webhooks

It delivers seconds after the 13:00 CET publication, HMAC-signed. Journalists and analysts: the live NO5 tracker has the all-time records, monthly history and a CSV download — free to cite with attribution. Home+ can download its entitled interval prices and forward risk directly to Excel from the API; the full 2015+ archive remains a Pro+ bulk export.

Live NO5 prices → All daily guides → Start with Home →

Method & citation. Prices are hourly means of published day-ahead auction results (native 15-minute periods averaged; ENTSO-E/SMARD, attributed). Wholesale-price component only — grid fees and taxes come on top and vary by supplier. Cite as "Voltcast Research, voltcast.com/guides/negative-watch-no5-2026-07-23".

Next issue 2 Oct

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✓ The month's widest day-ahead spreads
✓ Forecastability ranking — where we missed

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