Southeast European day-ahead electricity prices rebounded strongly for Sept. 28 as weekday demand recovered and regional cross-border flows shifted toward higher-priced western markets, while Serbia remained a major outlier with prices almost €50/MWh below Hungary.
Hungary’s HUPX base price rose €47.3/MWh to €161.19/MWh, while Romania climbed to €154.34/MWh, Bulgaria to €146.11/MWh and Greece to €135.11/MWh.
Croatia settled at €166.14/MWh, Montenegro at €165.13/MWh, Slovenia at €168.95/MWh, North Macedonia at €150.41/MWh and Albania at €129.40/MWh.
Serbia recorded the region’s lowest average at just €111.69/MWh, little changed from Sunday and around €49.5/MWh below HUPX. The unusually wide Serbian discount persisted despite the country remaining a net electricity importer.
Western markets were substantially stronger. Germany traded around €195.40/MWh, Austria at €174.51/MWh and Italy at about €203.55/MWh, preserving a strong economic incentive for electricity to move west where cross-border capacity was available.
Regional consumption increased by about 3.65 GW from Sunday to 28.83 GW, helping restore the weekday premium after the weekend price collapse.
At the same time, the combined Hungary and SEE system moved from an almost balanced position on Sunday to net exports averaging around 1.39 GW. About 1.26 GW flowed toward Italy, while roughly 547 MW moved toward Austria and Slovakia.
The change in cross-border direction was one of the strongest drivers behind Monday’s market recovery.
Bulgaria exported an average 1.33 GW, Romania about 754 MW, Greece 1.35 GW and Bosnia and Herzegovina around 530 MW. Hungary remained a net importer of about 821 MW, Croatia imported around 859 MW and Serbia about 394 MW.
Romania emerged as an important east-to-west transit source, with flows toward Hungary reaching around 1.92 GW on average. Bulgaria simultaneously supplied approximately 1.15 GW to Romania and almost 390 MW to Serbia, highlighting the increasingly interconnected flow structure across the eastern SEE markets.
Hungary then redistributed part of those imports west and south, exporting around 851 MW toward Austria, 679 MW toward Slovenia and 515 MW toward Croatia.
The resulting pattern shows that Hungary is increasingly functioning not simply as an import-dependent market but as a major transit hub linking lower-priced eastern generation with Central European demand.
Serbia remained the most important pricing anomaly.
SEEPEX traded around €34/MWh below Bulgaria, almost €43/MWh below Romania and close to €50/MWh below Hungary. Yet Serbia was still importing electricity overall, demonstrating that a national net balance alone increasingly provides little explanation for day-ahead price formation.
Instead, individual interconnector constraints, hourly commercial schedules and congestion determine whether cheaper electricity can reach neighbouring premium markets.
The hourly curves also showed the growing value of flexibility.
HUPX fell to around €5.6/MWh during the midday renewable period before climbing to €342.2/MWh at hour 20. Serbia ranged from around €20/MWh during the low-price period to €276.6/MWh in the evening.
Greece briefly reached €0/MWh around midday before recovering toward an evening maximum of about €271/MWh.
The result was another day in which the difference between individual hours was considerably larger than the difference between many national daily averages.
Strong solar production continues to compress midday prices, while the evening decline in renewable output rapidly restores premiums for flexible hydro, gas generation, storage and imports.
For traders, the Sept. 28 session therefore carried two signals. Weekday demand and stronger westbound exports restored higher average prices across most of SEE, but the region remains far from fully converged.
The increasingly valuable trade is not simply exposure to the regional base price. It is the ability to capture the widening spreads between countries and, increasingly, between oversupplied midday hours and the evening flexibility premium.
