Daily guide · SE3 · 2026-08-19
Negative-price watch Sweden Stockholm: 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, Stockholm (SE3) recorded no negative-price hours this week. The floor held at 5,97 EUR/MWh on 16 August at hour 11, comfortably above zero. That said, prices spent 19 hours below 10 EUR/MWh, so the market drifted close to the low end without ever crossing into negative territory.
For readers positioning around midday solar and low-demand windows, the signal is that soft-price risk is present but not acute. The 19 sub-10 EUR/MWh hours mark where value thinned out; the absence of negative settlements means downside exposure stayed contained this week. Our 7-day model returned no maximum negative probability, consistent with a week that stayed on the right side of zero.
The one concrete takeaway: watch the sub-10 EUR/MWh band rather than the zero line for now. With 262 negative periods logged year-to-date, the structural pressure remains, but this week it did not materialise in Stockholm. Treat the 5,97 EUR/MWh floor as a working reference point, and reassess if sub-10 hours begin clustering around the same midday window.
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 SE3 stands.
5.97
this week's floor (€/MWh), 2026-08-16 at 11:00 local
0 / 19
hours below €0 / below €10 this week
262
negative delivery periods in 2026 so far (SE3)
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": "SE3", "url": "https://your-app/hook"}' \
https://voltcast.com/api/v1/webhooksIt delivers seconds after the 13:00 CET publication, HMAC-signed. Journalists and analysts: the live SE3 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-se3-2026-08-19".
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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.