Heatwave raises red flags for power market

Temperatures reached 40C across Europe this week in the latest of several heatwaves which have engulfed the continent this summer.  

In response, power prices soared in many regions, with countries like France curbing nuclear power production because rivers – used for cooling purposes –  became too warm.

In this week’s episode, Richard discuss the impact of rising temperatures on power production, consumption and prices. How can Europe futureproof its power market from extreme weather conditions?

Host: Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News
Contributor: Julia Demirdag - News correspondent, Montel News

Guests:
Robin Girmes -  Managing Director, Energy Weather
Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember

Editor: Bled Maliqi
Producer: Sarah Knowles 

Transcript

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 0:06

Hello listeners and welcome to Plugged In - the Energy News podcast from Montel, where we bring the latest news issues and changes happening in the energy sector. Unless you've been living on Mars or have had a complete screen break over the summer, you'll have seen the devastating effect of global warming. Wildfires, floods, and droughts have caused havoc all over Europe. The heat is on quite literally with 40 degrees Celsius now the norm in many places. Yet the steady increase of red alerts and heat waves during the summer months is making the front pages for other reasons. Warming temperatures have changed the type of fish in our oceans, and while more blue fin tuna, northern seas may be welcome for some, the sheer numbers of jellyfish flooding in have clogged up the cooling systems at some nuclear plants. Is this what we should expect during the summer from now on? And how are rising temperatures already impacting power production consumption, and prices and questions remain about whether grids are set up to handle this extreme heat. In this episode, I'm gonna be speaking to a meteorologist and a prominent think tank. But first, I'm joined by our Germany correspondent Julia Demirdağ. Welcome to the podcast, Julia.

Julia Demirdag - News correspondent, Montel News: 1:19

Hi, Richard. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 1:22

You know, we're talking about the phenomenon called Hitzeflaute or which is, hot weather plus little or no wind. What have we seen happen with power prices in response to the heat waves?

Julia Demirdag - News correspondent, Montel News: 1:33

That's has kept traders very busy those past few weeks even I would say. Power prices during these periods usually surge. Because on the one hand, obviously demand rises for cooling and air conditioning and in the offices and everywhere really. And on the other hand when it's really hot and there's no wind, there's a lack of yeah, just generation in the system. And it's not only wind, we are missing when it's really hot. But obviously as we've all seen in France. That other generations are also down, like nuclear plants need to be taken offline or reduced because of the cooling issues and something we also should be aware of gas plants. They also have a lower efficiency when it's higher wind temperatures are higher than 30 degrees. And yeah. And even our solar panels can be less efficient when it's really hot. So on the one hand we have higher demand, and on the other hand we have yeah, lower generation availability.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 2:37

Not a obviously a combination that leads to very high and volatile prices. What are the main reasons behind this volatility in prices at the moment in bow prices in Europe.

Julia Demirdag - News correspondent, Montel News: 2:47

Yeah. That's the one thing is obviously solar because Europe has added a lot of solar capacity over the past years and that just kicks in during the day, obviously during now. So it starts ramping up in the morning and then comes down quickly in the evenings again. And these, like when it shifts between the high output and the lower output, these hours are actually where we see the hourly prices go really high because that's when the more expensive gas and coal plants need to come in, and especially ramping up and ramping down can become very expensive in the current system we have.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 3:27

And so which countries in particular are feeling the impact of the heat wastes the most? I mean, not just in terms of, we've seen dramatic pictures of wildfires and people suffering in the heat, but in terms, I'm thinking here in terms of power production and energy consumption which are the countries most impacted?

Julia Demirdag - News correspondent, Montel News: 3:47

Yeah, I think at the moment we see this, especially in France, it's having a big impact on France because there we have all the nuclear plants along the rivers and especially along the river Rome which has had very high temperatures recently we've seen a lot of nuclear plants taken offline or output reduced. And yeah, because of the cooling, waters getting too hot. And this week we had up to 10% or nearly 10% of the capacity offline. And then, yeah, there are also things we didn't see coming, maybe or not all of us when at Glin the jellyfish. In the ocean blocked the cooling system. Which yeah, it also has to do with with climate warming. The jellyfish, they appear when it gets really warm and the water temperatures get warm and they are really warm at the moment. And yeah, so that's also obviously having an impact. But also in Germany where we have lots of solar, we see prices spike, especially in the evenings. And yeah, I think those are the most prominent areas now.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 4:51

Thank you very much, Julia. Very illuminating.

Julia Demirdag - News correspondent, Montel News: 4:53

Yeah, you're welcome.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 4:54

How are energy markets coping under this pressure? I'm pleased to be joined by meteorologist and managing director of Energy weather, Robin Girmes. Welcome back to the podcast, Robin.

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 5:05

Thank you very much, Richard,

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 5:07

and I'm also joined by Pawel Czyzak Europe program director at the Think Tank Ember. Thank you for joining us on the podcast, Pawel.

Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember: 5:14

Thanks for inviting me.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 5:15

Perfect. I first wanna get stuck into what's happening and the weather patterns that we you know, we are experiencing across Europe. We're seeing it on our TV screens, wildfires, floods, droughts, et cetera. Robin, how? How are the extreme heat waves affecting power markets?

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 5:31

Quite different per country, depending a bit on the type of generation structure a country has. So maybe starting with Germany, we're dealing with less temperature sensitivity per degree. Then, for example, other countries like France. Nevertheless, we have self-made issue now with very high installed capacity of solar, which in the evening of course, do not really support. And summer we have low wind and then are forced to ramp up. All convention is possible in the evening at a very fast pace. So lacking flexibility, which yet is not met. By batteries at least not sufficiently. In France, for example, we have a very high temperature load coefficient with. High sensitivity from that point of view concerning temperature anomalies as just seen now in that mid-August heat wave and that heat wave special as it lasts very long for French conditions, at least in southern half. It's a bit leaving out Paris, but it's now, let's say a two week appearance for South Southwest and here the impact is on a relatively not flexible. Plant park with quite a lot of nukes, run of river production, which anyway is low in such a warm summer. And the cooling water is an issue. Therefore for plants here in France, mainly for nukes, which at a certain point have to reduce their capacity their output compared capacity to yeah, meet environmental targets for the temperature of water after taking for energy production.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 7:12

We'll return to some of these issues in a bit Robin, but do you think, have, this is something that's happening more regularly, do you see, is this something, these weather patterns is something that we can expect every summer and we can prepare for them?

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 7:27

Heat waves we've picked every summer, but nevertheless, there has been a bit of a change within which is connected to climate change. They appear a bit more often, and especially they're a bit more long lived. And that is maybe the key change so far in Europe that pattern persistence. And you have not let's say in former decades, 1, 2, 3 heat waves per summer, each of them three to seven days. Sometimes they're connecting, they're repeating and in such a repeating mode, the third or fourth wave of the same weather. It's causing the extreme, it is causing that rare event of having, for example, more than two weeks of 35 degree plus in widespread coverage in Southern Europe.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 8:12

But like countries like Spain and Italy, you could say, or the southern parts of France have maybe been. Quite used to, or Greece, et cetera, have been used to very high temperatures. Whereas now the impact seems to be more on, on northern European countries, such as we've seen, a long period of temperatures above 30 degrees in, in the Nordic region, like in Finland and in parts of Norway and Sweden, which is very unusual. Is this something that we could expect more and more of?

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 8:38

Let's have it this way. The year to year volatility will stay very high. You will have summers with lots of rainfall. Maybe that repeating tenancy as well for the wet side. You may remember some of the flooding events in the past. It's always not the first low crossing in area, but the third, fourth, fifth, causing the flooding and a heat wave vaccine. Now in July in the Nordics was, let's say. Another direction of heat to go instead of May, June for central and Western Europe, known August appearing in these regions again and intermediate. There was some low pressure track causing cooler issue cooler attempts for CWE, but the ones being bypassed and to Nordics, so we also deal with too much warmth around. Yeah, that is also one effect of the climate change.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 9:31

As Robin mentioned, Pavel we've seen power plant, reduction in production at some of the French nuclear fleets which have to, which are affected by river temperatures. When they get too high, they can't be used for cooling purposes. And also recently I seen by, by graveling the plant on the English channel, which has been affected by a invasion of jellyfish, shall we say, in the corn fish. And this is probably as re as a result of warming oceans. But other heat waves here exposing some weaknesses in some of Europe's energy production.

Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember: 10:04

Yes, definitely. We're seeing. More and more severe impacts of the heat waves. So there's still things, like Robin said, we're having more and longer heat waves, but these also affect us more because, for example, of the let's say not very young age of the French nuclear fleet. So there's there's I guess a few. Different mechanisms in play here. But we can definitely say that we're not very ready for Azure's power systems. We're not very ready for these frequent heat waves. And we have a second. Fairly severe heat wave happening. We had one just in the last week of June where we already saw quite a lot of stress on different power systems. We saw significant price spikes and demand, crunches let's supply crunches, let's say in France, in Spain and Germany going into Poland. So that was already quite a big event. Then we had a little blackout in Czechia to add to the to the stress. And we're seeing something similar happening now. So the week of the week of August 11th we're also seeing price spikes happening. In France again maybe the average crisis, maybe 50, 60 euros per megawatt hour 70. We're now up to roughly a hundred, 120. And we're seeing spikes in Poland, for example, towards upwards of. 200 euros per megawatt hour. So we're still not in, let's say emergency territory, but definitely the prices are being elevated. And also the spreads are huge because during the day, prices are at zero at the moment, and in the evenings they go up to 200, 250. That, of course, is an opportunity to deploy batteries, which is the let's say, positive aspect of it. But it's also a sign that the system is under stress. And as we mentioned there's quite a few gigawatts missing in France already, and there's another, an expectation that another two three gigawatts will be missing this week because of the. Because of the river temperatures. So that's already 10% of the French capacity gone. So these aren't minor situations for the European power system?

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 12:32

No, and I think it, it's clear what's happens when solar comes off. You need to fire up basically thermal plants if you don't have the backup battery capacity. But that's also quite risky, isn't it? The, if you're firing up, I dunno whether you can do it with gas, fire plants, CG gts, but combined cycle gas turbines. But maybe with coal that's a little bit more tricky. And aren't you increasing then the risk that, firing up a gas plant, is a risky business if you're, it needs to react within seconds. I can imagine. Pawel, what's your view here?

Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember: 13:06

Yes, I would say we're in a place of transition that isn't very pleasant because yes, we have a lot of solar feed in during the day. Perhaps even more than we need, and we don't have enough storage to actually store that. So then you end up with the zero prices or even negative prices. And also you end up with a shortage towards the evening hours. A very simple action point and a profitable one would be to have more batteries. And we're seeing quite a big boom in Germany and in Spain. Spain was a bit lagging so we're seeing lots of deployment there happening this quarter and last quarter. We're not necessarily seeing that in France, and I think surprisingly, there's not a lot of solar in France compared to some other countries, but the country is. Still struggling. So that's another interesting situation where you have this seemingly very stable base load fleet of nuclear plants that should pretty much provide full power at all times. And yet they're being disappointing and they've been disappointing Europe since 2021, 2022, where already that generation was massively reduced due to some maintenance issues. And now we're seeing these heat wave events affecting France as well and just spills all over the continent because it's quite a big power system. Definitely we, we have an action point to ramp up storage, but we also have the other action point of what's really to do with France when the units start causing more and more problems and they basically are too old to keep running for the next, let's say 10 years, 15 years.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 14:53

Absolutely, and maybe some warning signs, or at least some lessons learned for new nuclear build, which is apparently very clear that the French government wants to co is committed to it as other governments across Europe are that you have to deal with these summer heat waves and cooling issues. But Robin. I want to turn to you and ask you a little bit about, I've heard talk, I dunno whether it's now a common term, but this word Hitzeflaute. I, we've had the Dunkelflaute, which is when there is very little wind in a sort of dark February night. And you can't rely on renewables. You have to have backup. What's the phenomenon here when it's, there's heat waves, does it often accompanied by little or no wind?

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 15:31

Yes, as general there's additional, not very intense, but available correlation between then heat waves. They're high pressure driven usually, and in those situations, especially low winds. Yeah, having said that, the volatility within is relatively strong. So we've seen, for example, last month more mixed conditions through CWE, but the wind was even less than in June, which was way more sunny. Yeah. So it is, I don't like the wording Hitzeflaute for the reason that wind anyway does not play the key role in summer. It has this weakest point of seasonality, so it's maybe more worth looking to. At least from the German point of view, but increasing number of countries to follow from the solar point of view, how much do high sunshine, high temperatures, and then lack of flexibility correlate and cause issues, which in the end so far more meat to the bullish side, price-wise. Then to the bearish, which you would think at first thought due to the new bit of solar. It's not always just bearish to add additional gigs of solar.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 16:46

So can you explain that? Why is that the bullish density, why could that increase prices? Robin.

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 16:51

For countries like France, Germany, Poland you have a good portion of the new of the power plant fleets being not that flexible. You mentioned it with coal being a risk with nukes as well, so you can't ramp them up within seconds or. Even minutes. And with Germany, for example, now in late summer, facing between hour 16 and 18, a steepness in the solar day of more than one gig per five minutes, which needs to be compensated by convention, you're really on the edge. So if you further continue to rise that. Steepness of the slope, or if by nature the steepness is increasing into late summer when the darkness begins earlier in the evening, but you still have at noon a similar high level of maximum amount, then you're a bit. Beyond capacities of the system, which is then met, not by emergency case, as Pawel mentioned, but with very high prices. Prices, which are let's say double or three times the most expensive part in the generation cost, which is from our definition, a kind of spark.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 18:00

Absolutely. So one gig or every five minutes that's the drop off in production. That's astonishing. That's 12 gigawatts in an hour.

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 18:06

Yeah. It's a bit more even in Germany currently in the. Heat wave we now face in mid-August, and it's getting even a bit more steep, independent from the temperature due to daytime regularities into early September.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 18:20

That's that's astonishing. That's the equivalent of 12 nuclear plants going off in the space of an hour. I mean, that's that's, that the system can cope with that is very impressive at the moment. But I think what other types of flexibility other than batteries, I mean you mentioned battery batteries are obviously the key and these high prices should be incentivizing massive rollout of batteries. What other kind of flexibility options are there? Robin.

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 18:41

Not enough yet. You need a bit more cross border cables maybe to connect. You have certain negative correlation of pattern in the weather. So a high pressure area is very rarely covering all of Europe. So if you have high pressure in southern central Europe, you usually have the lows being bypassed to Scandi. So if there's wind and or preset, why not exporting? Yeah. So cross country connections on the other sides as well. Hydro storage. Yeah. Could be a solution on the. Low emission stuff which is on the continent at least very limited for new allowances. So nobody wants to see new storages in Switzerland or Austria.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 19:23

And is that, as the rollout of electric vehicles continue as a pace since certainly in some countries, would that also help,

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 19:30

if bilateral bidirectional loading is allowed. So greetings to EU at some point, maybe they are able to think about that. That would help quite a lot as there are several gigawatts storage capacity running on the streets in Germany alone. Yeah, in Netherlands as a,

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 19:50

they just need to relax the rules. What's your view here, Pawel, what other kind of options do you think, for example what does France, what kinda options are on the table for France?

Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember: 19:59

I think France is a particularly difficult place for all of this we're talking about. And just to, one, one thing to add to Robin's point. There's also a big demand increase connected to all of these events we're talking about. So you have high solar, you have low wind, you have stress on thermal plants, plus you have an increase in demand. And it's actually, I was just looking at the data for these past few days. So the week of the August 11th. And in France and Germany the increase in peak demand is five to 10%. So that's quite a lot. Again, considering the supply supply crunch, the good thing is that this demand sits not necessarily in the evening somewhat surprisingly so actually the use of AC air conditioning that is pushing this demand up, it seems to be focused more in the early noon-ish hours, let's say even morning hours. So I'm assuming also because people go to work and and turn on the AC there. So that's actually good from a flexibility standpoint because you have a bit more alignment of the demand with the supply from solar and generally that's what we should be aiming for, which is. To shift as much as the demand towards these hours of high solar feed in. And of course there's different ways of doing that through tariff designs, through compensation schemes for the industry. But in the simplest form we were talking about electric vehicles, you should basically force people to charge them during the day. Nobody should be charging your the EV at 7.00 PM right? Or 6.30 PM and maybe same goes for thermal storage. That's maybe more of an autumn thing. But if you have a hot water boiler or heater. You should be charging that again during the day and not at night. Not not in the evening. So there's different incentive schemes that can facilitate that. And there's schemes like Octopus Energy in the UK is a, let's say, pioneer of that. Basically paying people to shift this demand so people get money or make savings. The system is happy. The energy company is happy. Everybody's happy, basically. But you need to facilitate that. But it's not a, it's not rocket science, I would say.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 22:25

No. So to, to incentivize that shift in demand, but also tweaking the regulatory framework as Robin and yourself mentioned, to allow for that two-way both so that you can use car batteries for feed into the grid as well as take out the grid. But that, that's very interesting. Pawel you mentioned Poland. What are the. Issues in Poland at the moment? Is it the same kind of issues we're talking here about to the country's had a massive rollout of solar power in the last few years, but it's very, obviously the fundamental basics there is coal generation. So what are the main issues? Is it also rivers that the river temperatures used for cooling that are a problem?

Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember: 23:00

It, there used to be a problem. There were a lot of upgrades done in the past that we've gone through a few stress events in 2015, 2020, 2021. And there were a lot of upgrades. For example, reservoirs built next to coal plants to manage the temperature better. So I don't think that's actually a big problem now. The problem is the same as everywhere else, which is the lack of flexibility. So you can have a fully operational coal plant, but it still cannot ramp up a gigawatt in five minutes usually. Right? So again, there's a lot of work being done to. Well incentivized storage systems but also introduced schemes dynamic tariffs were just recently introduced so again, schemes for this consumer let's say incentives or industrial incentives for demand shifting. And then we also just recently had an anti-black out regulation package that is, I think that's interesting because that's more on the grid side and the security side. That's something we didn't talk about because in these stress events, even if you do have a blackout, there's different ways of handling that. There's better ways and worse ways. And you can put in place procedures and technologies that can make it less painful or you can make it more contained. So maybe you lose power in. Part of the country, but it's not, it doesn't spill too far. So things like that are being tested not only in Poland and the UK and Belgium but I think that's. A process that should be also emphasized. So technical solutions that allow you to restart the system for example, from the vast amount of solar. It cannot be done at the moment, but if you if you have procedures for that and if you have grid forming inverters, if you have some storage, you can actually start the system up through these little islands. I don't know, villages, village by village, basically. Instead of having a massive countrywide blackout, and then you're stuck for a long time.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 25:08

As we've experienced in and in, in the Iberian case.

Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember: 25:12

Exactly.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 25:12

Obviously. Although, they're still looking into the causes of that. But Robin, if I turn to you, what, you obviously speak to traders. What kind of, what, how are they reacting to these kind of extreme variations in daytime prices?

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 25:26

Now, I think they don't handle it different than other volatile periods, so it's volatility, which they in general most of those, at least who are with a proprietary aspect. Questions to which type of trader you talking to? Is it more like direct marketer with day head to intraday optimization? Then it's a bit on the edge with some of the forecasting and forecasting abilities as well. Yeah, so mistakes can be relatively large in the models and this is something challenging then in tight situations. On the curve it's not really much of acarpa defect visible. No. So on base for example, or base peak spreads, it doesn't do that much. People expecting, okay, and summer it's hot, sometimes sunny and with the consequence of maybe a more expensive, weak being levied off by somewhat more onset conditions again. The longer the contact, the less impact from that summer's spike soft. So it was different in 2003 or 2006. These times seem to become.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 26:29

Yeah, and there wasn't that much renewables installed then anywhere at that time. But obviously it makes, the, it create, the importance of correct forecasts are absolutely important here, aren't they? Absolutely crucial in these terms for those kind of intraday and day ahead traders reacting very quick 'cause they could, if you're out of balance with those kind of prices, it could certainly get very expensive. Right.

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 26:50

Yeah, absolutely. People maybe are more worried about the Dunkelflaute if we put it in comparison to the Hitzeflaute.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 26:59

That's more of a worry in winter. But yeah. Yeah, and obviously it's too early to talk about that, and that's a completely different subject matter. Maybe we'll return to that in, in January Robin, I think. What kind of innovations do you and technologies do you expect to see Pavel in terms of, in Europe to deal with this? We talked a little about EVs and batteries, et cetera. And you talked about grid innovations as well. Is there anything else that we should be looking at?

Pawel Czyzak - Europe Programme Director, Ember: 27:22

I would say these are the two cat broad categories. Yes, batteries, storage systems, more hydro pump storage, but also much more integration, the vehicle to grid integration, because that's still somewhat lacking. And intelligent thermal storage as well. So even at hot water boilers aren't very intelligent at the moment, but you can make them connected and optimized. Same with AC systems. And then on the grid technologies again, we have the lack of grid forming inverters and generally grid forming devices at the moment. So there's a case for they're more expensive, that's why they're not many of them yet. But there's a case for incentivizing that. So basically people should be paid for the grid services they provide, whether that is inertia or frequency management or startup services black start services, stuff like that. So that there's not, every country even has a market for all of those things. We desperately need things like inertia in the system. So we need to basically pay people for it in some way. So I'm, I think maybe this year, next year we'll see these markets established in quite a few countries where they're not there yet. And then we will see first auctions again in the uk. We already had a few, maybe two auctions for, for frequency, for inertia, for even line management, which is very interesting. That's another innovation where you people basically volunteer to take the load off the grid in certain places of the grid. If a line is being congest congested that's quite innovative, I would say. And again, you get paid for that. If you if you can reduce the load on certain lines. In the UK it's the Scottish. English border, let's say, but you can imagine that happening on the maybe the Iberian France border, which is always congested as well or German, Poland. A lot of grid innovations. I think grids are generally a hot topic these days. So I'm feeling may maybe we'll see quite a few of these innovations coming to life this year, next year.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 29:38

It's quite probably quite literally quite hot these grids. I think, I think, and I think that's good though. I think it's quite I think the opportunities there are, are numerous and they, I think, you know, in terms of this, especially looking at the the intraday volatility here and the prices. But a final question to you. Robin and I think, I can see it. There's sweltering heat in many parts of Europe. How long is it gonna last? You are the weather expert. Robin, how come long? Can we when's it gonna start cooling down a bit?

Robin Girmes - Managing Director, Energy Weather: 30:05

It's. Relatively persistent in time of the year in the seasonality. It's relatively late to face these high temps, and the impact of the temps will decline anyway due to the changes in day nighttime scheme, so we can observe it currently with the rising water attempts after cooling down, for example, in Germany. The rising now much slower than with the same maximum temperature per day in June, as there are more hours overnight, less hours being above 30 degree, and so on. So the impact on the energy market starts to decline after this week, starting from August 11th, and probably will not return this year.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 30:48

Fingers crossed. Yeah we'll see how it goes out. Let's say warm weather's also quite pleasant sometimes, when I'm on a cold January night, I think I'd quite look warmly, look forward to an August of 30, 28 to nine 30 degrees. But Robin and Pawel, thank you very much indeed for being guests on Plugged In - the Montel News Podcast. It's been an excellent and insightful discussion. I hope you agree, listeners, and thank you for tuning in to this episode. Our podcast episodes are released every Friday. For the latest news from Montel, please visit montelnews.com and you can follow us on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and other social media channels. See you next time.