UK Energy Market Report - 7 September 2026

Day-ahead peak settles below baseload for a second session and the weekend system price reaches minus £84.88, while the gas curve rises as one

Friday 4 September repeated Thursday’s oddity and went further with it. UK day-ahead peak power settled at £44.84/MWh against a day-ahead baseload of £72.76/MWh, putting the 7am to 7pm block £27.92 below the round-the-clock price for the second session running.

Both prompts collapsed to get there. Baseload fell £22.12 or 23.31% on the day and peak fell £21.16 or 32.06%. Then the weekend produced the deepest negative price this report has recorded, minus £84.88/MWh on Saturday afternoon.

Gas went the other way entirely. Every NBP contract on the near board rose, day-ahead by 3.50p to 179.00p, and this morning the whole curve is indicated up around another 4.5p.

Gas Market

NBP day-ahead settled at 179.00 p/therm on Friday 4 September, up 3.50p or 1.99% on the day.

The curve rose with it and rose as one. Oct-26 settled at 178.81p, up 0.82p, Q4-26 at 181.17p, up 0.65p, and Winter-26 at 179.40p, up 0.95p. Q1-27 gained the most of the near contracts, 1.27p to 177.60p. Summer-27 added 0.16p to 119.72p.

A miss to own, and a plain one. Friday’s report published a 09:20 indicative day-ahead of 174.79p and said the front had softened a little further. It settled at 179.00p. That is 4.21p out and pointing the wrong way, on the morning after this report noted three close prints in a row. Winter-26 was marked at 177.46p against a settlement of 179.40p, 1.94p out in the same direction. Three good prints did not make the index reliable, which is what we said at the time.

This morning the index is bullish again. At 09:27 day-ahead was marked at 182.99p, Winter-26 at 183.87p and Q4-26 at 185.59p, each roughly 4.5p above Friday’s settlement. Given Friday’s error, read those as an indication carrying a timestamp, not as a forecast.

The system supports the direction. On a like-for-like 07:00 comparison against Friday morning, demand is up 29.33 mcm/day to 108.86, linepack has drawn 24.30 mcm to 319.80, and Langeled has lifted 6.00 mcm/day to 17.00. TotalEnergies reports Britain opening around 7 mcm/day short this morning, against roughly 20 mcm/day long on Friday. UKCS production is flat at 80.20 mcm/day.

The Friday-to-Monday comparison is deliberate. The source data’s day-on-day column sets a 7am figure against a Sunday one stamped 2pm, and Sunday demand does not compare with a working Monday.

Norwegian supply improved on the aggregate and worsened at one field. Gassco reported total exit nominations of 280.9 mcm/day, up from 276.3 on Friday, with Oseberg back on and lifting Langeled nominations into the UK. Against that, Troll is in unplanned maintenance for a process issue, curtailing 9.9 mcm/day between 5 and 8 September.

Britain remains the cheapest gas market in the group at 179.00p, 1.24p under TTF, 3.05p under Germany’s THE, 3.56p under Spain’s PVB and 10.69p under Italy’s PSV. That discount is what keeps gas flowing out through BBL, which is covered below.

A caveat on the far curve, as usual. This morning’s index marks Summer-28 at 83.49p against a settlement of 77.84p, a gap of 5.65p. The same contract printed an identical 84.99p on two consecutive mornings last week, which was clearly a stale quote. This mark has at least moved, but a 7% gap on a contract that barely trades is not a price signal.

Electricity Market

UK day-ahead baseload settled at £72.76/MWh on Friday, down £22.12 or 23.31%. Day-ahead peak settled at £44.84/MWh, down £21.16 or 32.06%, and £27.92 below baseload.

Thursday’s discount was £28.88. Two sessions in a row at close to £28 is no longer a curiosity, it is September wind and solar covering the daytime block while the expensive plant is only called after dark.

The weekend imbalance market showed the same mechanism without the restraint of a working week. On Saturday 5 September the minimum system sell price was minus £84.88/MWh at 13:14 and the maximum system buy price was £233.50/MWh at 18:14, a range of £318.38 inside one day. Sunday ran minus £30.00 at 09:48 against £222.50 at 19:48. Friday itself settled at £179.60 maximum and minus £14.42 minimum.

Today’s part-day imbalance figures read £200.00 maximum at 04:48 and £60.00 minimum at 02:49, but that covers only the first eighteen settlement periods, to roughly 09:00. Each of the last three days went negative at midday, and a print taken before 09:00 structurally cannot see that. Treat today’s floor as a number that has not happened yet.

The forward curve split. The front fell, with Oct-26 baseload down £0.72 to £139.35, Nov-26 down £0.48 to £149.12 and Q4-26 down £0.58 to £145.34. From Winter-26 backwards it rose: Winter-26 up £0.44 to £145.49, Q1-27 up £1.49 to £145.65, Summer-27 up £0.39 to £98.71 and Winter-27 up £0.40 to £99.75.

This morning’s indications are sharply higher across the board. Day-ahead baseload is offered at £128.50, £55.74 above Friday’s settlement, with Q4-26 at £152.90 and Q1-27 at £151.95. A £55.74 morning gap on the prompt is exactly the kind of print this report has been wrong about before, so it stays an indication until it settles.

Nuclear is the reason the winter contracts will not follow the prompt down. Four units are now fully offline: Heysham 2-8 at 660 MW from 4 September for a scheduled 80 days, Torness 1 at 640 MW from 6 September, and Heysham 1-1 at 610 MW and Hartlepool 2 at 620 MW both from today.

That is 2,530 MW of firm baseload out of the system, on top of an unplanned 195 MW reduction at Heysham 1-2 that is scheduled to run 186 days. Friday’s report flagged these four as arriving between 4 and 7 September; they have all arrived, and the Heysham 2-8 outage alone runs into late November.

Wind is forecast to peak tomorrow and then fall below its seasonal norm from Thursday into next week. If that verifies, the negative middays of the last three days stop and the prompt reconnects with a curve that is already pricing a short winter.

Oil, Carbon and Global Commodities

Brent settled higher on Friday and has been supported again this morning by the Middle East. Iran has said it will announce a new restricted zone in the Gulf in the coming days, along with maps of a new shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, after an exchange of strikes on shipping over the weekend.

Coal was the largest mover in percentage terms, with API2 Cal-27 up $1.88 to $134.46/tonne. Coal and carbon rising together is a fuel-switching signal that pushes the marginal cost of thermal generation up, and it arrives in the same week that 2,530 MW of nuclear leaves the British system.

The two carbon markets have drifted a long way apart. At Friday’s sterling-euro rate of 1.1642, the UK ETS December contract at £59.73 is worth about €69.54, a discount of roughly €14.64 to the EUA at €84.18. UK installations are carrying a materially lower carbon cost than their EU equivalents, which matters for anyone modelling a linked-market future or reporting a carbon position across both. Businesses that need that position quantified rather than estimated can start with our carbon reporting service.

Sterling firmed slightly against the euro, up 0.0022 to 1.1642, and was unchanged against the dollar at 1.3521. Neither move is large enough to affect a UK buyer’s landed cost this week.

Storage and Supply Outlook

European storage stands at roughly 65.9% full, materially below the same point last year, and that gap is doing most of the work in the winter risk premium.

The British position is worse than any headline percentage suggests, because Rough is at zero and so is Humbly Grove. The working stock sits in HolFord and Stublach at 75% each, Holehouse Farm at 70% and Hornsea at 57%, with Aldbrough at 51% and Hill Top at 14%. On the LNG side South Hook is 65% full, Isle of Grain 32% and Dragon 33%.

Ten cargoes are scheduled into northwest European terminals between today and Thursday, around 985 mcm of regas volume, seven of them US-origin. None is booked into a UK terminal in that window, though TotalEnergies expects one US cargo in the UK next week.

UK sendout is running at 7.30 mcm/day, split between South Hook at 4.90 and Isle of Grain at 2.40, with Dragon idle. That is modest, and it is the reason the system opened short this morning despite Norwegian nominations at their highest in several days.

Britain is still exporting to the continent through BBL, at 15.68 mcm/day into the Netherlands, with the Belgian interconnector idle in both directions. A country with Rough empty, exporting gas in early September because its hub is the cheapest in Europe, is a reasonable one-line summary of why the forward gas curve refuses to fall when the prompt does.

Supply risk also rose at the political end. Russia struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure again over the weekend, with Naftogaz reporting damage to production facilities and some equipment taken offline.

What This Means for Your Business

Friday was a good day to buy a single day of power and told you almost nothing about a contract. A 23% fall on the prompt sat alongside a £0.44 rise on Winter-26. Those are two different markets.

The numbers to plan around are Winter-26 at £145.49/MWh and 179.40 p/therm. Both rose on a day the prompt collapsed, and both rose across the two sessions in which day-ahead peak settled below baseload. Last week did nothing to improve a 2026/27 winter renewal.

The number that should shape a longer decision is Winter-27, at 116.33 p/therm and £99.75/MWh. That is 63.07p cheaper on gas and £45.74 cheaper on power than the winter immediately in front of us. Any contract that reaches past next winter is buying into a different curve, and that is the case for looking beyond a straight twelve-month renewal rather than defaulting to one.

For sites with heavy daytime load, two consecutive peak-below-baseload settlements are worth acting on rather than noting. If your contract prices a flat blended rate across the day, you are paying through a discount the market is now handing out regularly in the shoulder months.

If you want to know what these movements mean for your own contract dates and consumption profile, speak to one of our energy consultants today.

Previous report: UK Energy Market Report – 4 September 2026