Daily guide · SE1 · 2026-07-20
Negative-price watch Sweden Luleå: 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.
Luleå's floor this week landed at -5,13 EUR/MWh on 13 July, hour 13, a shallow dip by the standards of a genuine oversupply event. Across the week, 11 hours cleared below zero, but the more telling figure is the 105 hours priced under 10 EUR/MWh. The negative episodes are the visible edge of a much broader band of very cheap power sitting close to, but not through, the floor.
For the reader, that distinction matters. A midday negative print draws attention, yet the standing risk here is the sustained low-price block, not the brief excursions below zero. The 188 negative periods logged year-to-date confirm this is a recurring feature of the SE1 zone rather than a one-off, so exposure planning should assume repetition through the summer.
The concrete takeaway: the seven-day forward view shows a maximum probability of negative pricing of 0, meaning no negative hours are currently signalled ahead. Treat this week's -5,13 EUR/MWh as a floor already behind you, and focus positioning on capturing the sub-10 EUR/MWh hours rather than waiting for deeper negatives that the data does not yet support.
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 SE1 stands.
-5.13
this week's floor (€/MWh), 2026-07-13 at 13:00 local
11 / 105
hours below €0 / below €10 this week
188
negative delivery periods in 2026 so far (SE1)
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 SE1 over the next 7 days at
0%.
That number updates daily via GET /v1/risk/negative/SE1
— 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": "SE1", "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 SE1 tracker has the all-time records, monthly history and a CSV download — free to cite with attribution. For the systematic view (which hours, which seasons, how deep), the full 2015+ archive is one bulk export away.
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-se1-2026-07-20".
The monthly European power roundup
Negative-price records, the biggest spreads, which zones were hardest to forecast — every number computed from our production data, on the 2nd of each month. No filler, unsubscribe anytime.