The regional day-ahead power market turned decisively lower for delivery on 18 March, with nearly every SEE market posting a steep correction from Tuesday’s elevated levels as renewable output recovered, thermal generation increased and net imports from Core Europe rose materially. The move was broad rather than local. Hungary’s HUPX cleared at €103.13/MWh, down €34.1/MWh day on day, while Romania fell to €94.35/MWh, Bulgaria to €92.55/MWh, Greece to €90.85/MWh, Serbia to €89.24/MWh, Croatia to €99.61/MWh, Slovenia to €101.27/MWh, and Montenegro to €90.35/MWh. Albania remained the clear outlier on the downside at €62.97/MWh, reflecting its hydro-heavy structure and much wider daily price swing.
What changed was not demand in any dramatic sense, but the shape of supply. Regional consumption was almost flat at 34,129 MW average, only 40 MW above the previous day, so the price drop was driven mainly by a stronger generation stack rather than weaker load. Total regional generation rose to 35,440 MW, up 2,656 MW day on day. The largest swing came from wind, which jumped to 3,404 MW, a rise of 1,969 MW, while gas-fired output increased to 6,366 MW and coal generation to 7,001 MW. Hydro also improved to 7,935 MW. Solar output, however, fell sharply to 3,456 MW, down 1,420 MW, which helps explain why the market still retained a firm evening structure despite the lower daily averages. Nuclear remained stable at 5,842 MW.
That combination matters for trading because it produced a softer regional base price without fully crushing peak-hour value. In other words, the market was cheaper, but not loose across the full curve. Hungary’s hourly profile still printed a daily maximum of €230/MWh, Romania €153.6/MWh, Bulgaria €153.6/MWh, Croatia €175.4/MWh, Serbia €173/MWh and Montenegro €140/MWh. This is the familiar March pattern in Central and South Eastern Europe: stronger midday renewable output compresses base prices, but evening ramps remain expensive enough to preserve optionality for flexible hydro, gas peakers and battery-type strategies where available.
Cross-border positioning also shifted in a way that reinforced the bearish daily tone. The region’s total net import stood at -1,075 MW, which was 277 MW less negative than the previous day, but the more important signal was the sharp rise in Core inflows. Imports from the Core direction reached 1,409 MW, up 684 MW day on day. At the same time, the HU-DE spot spread widened to €14.22/MWh, up €3.1/MWh from the previous session. That tells traders something important: Hungary and its neighboring SEE markets were still priced above Germany enough to attract western inflows, even after the regional sell-off. Put simply, the region became cheaper, but not cheap enough to eliminate the import pull from lower-priced western markets.
The spread structure across neighboring hubs confirms that the correction was uneven. Hungary remained at a premium to most SEE markets. The reported differentials versus HUPX were around -€8.78/MWh for Romania, -€10.58/MWh for Bulgaria, -€12.27/MWh for Greece, -€13.89/MWh for Serbia, -€12.78/MWh for Montenegro and -€40.16/MWh for Albania, while Slovenia and Croatia stayed much tighter at roughly -€1.86/MWh and -€3.52/MWh respectively. Austria also remained close to the Hungarian market, with EPEX-AT at €100.92/MWh, only about €2.21/MWh below HUPX. Italy stood far above the region at €149.87/MWh, a premium of €46.74/MWh to Hungary, keeping the southbound export story structurally intact even on a softer day.
For Serbian trading specifically, SEEPEX at €89.24/MWh looked relatively soft against the broader region, down €20.3/MWh from the previous day and sitting nearly €14/MWh below HUPX. That discount is commercially relevant because Serbia continues to sit between tighter northern pricing and structurally differentiated southern flows. The regional commercial flow map in the report shows notable average last-seven-day exchanges including HU > RS, RO > RS, HR > RS, BA > RS and ME > RS, which together underline Serbia’s role as both a transit and balancing zone rather than an isolated national market. In practical trading terms, Serbia remains highly exposed to regional spread convergence, hydro conditions in the western Balkans, and import economics from Hungary and Romania.
Montenegro also deserves attention, not because BELEN was especially high at €90.35/MWh, but because the broader news flow points to a market that is becoming more strategically important for regional transmission optionality. The newsletter highlights financing for upgrades on the 220 kV corridor linking Montenegro with Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with expected line capacity increasing toward 600 MW. For the immediate day-ahead market that changes nothing, but for medium-term traders and asset owners it reinforces a direction of travel: the western Balkans are slowly building more cross-border flexibility, and that ultimately reduces the severity of local price dislocations while increasing the tradability of hydro, wind and balancing capacity across borders.
Romania’s position remains one of the more interesting in the region. The daily price at €94.35/MWh was well below Hungary but above Serbia and Greece, while the country’s January fundamentals in the same report showed a system that is becoming more balanced: electricity production rose 10.9% year on year to 4.93 TWh, hydropower increased 35.3%, wind generation rose 39.8%, and imports fell 14.7%. Those numbers are not a same-day trading signal, but they do support a wider market view that Romania is structurally gaining more internal flexibility, especially as battery announcements accelerate. The report notes ENEVO’s agreement with Sungrow for more than 1 GWh of storage deployment, with 440 MWh targeted by end-2026 in the first wave. Over time, that should dampen some of the intraday volatility that still characterizes Romanian and wider eastern regional pricing.
From a curve perspective, the front-end commodity mix was mildly constructive rather than bearish. CEGH gas was at €52.85/MWh, up €0.7/MWh day on day, while EUA Dec-26 stood at €66.65/t, down €2.3/t. Hungarian power forwards were mixed but still firm in absolute terms: Week 13 at €113/MWh, Week 14 at €101.5/MWh, Apr-26 at €99.5/MWh and Cal-26 at €110/MWh. Coal forwards were quoted at $53/t for Apr-26 and Q2-26, while Greek gas was at €44.04/MWh. The important takeaway is that spot collapsed harder than the forward complex. That usually indicates traders saw Wednesday’s move as a weather-and-renewables adjustment rather than the start of a deeper bearish repricing in prompt fundamentals.
Weather supports that reading. Forecast temperatures across much of SEE and Hungary remain relatively mild over the coming days, with Hungary around 10.7°C on 18 March, Serbia 10.6°C, Romania 8.0°C, Greece 12.0°C, and the broader SEE+HU cluster at 8.7°C. That is not cold enough to create a major late-winter load shock. So the market is likely to stay focused on wind availability, hydro positioning, solar midday depressions and cross-border import capability rather than on abrupt demand-side tightening.
The clearest trading interpretation for today is that the region reverted from a tighter Tuesday into a more normally supplied Wednesday, but it did not break into genuine oversupply. The presence of strong evening maxima, continued Hungarian premium to Germany, and Italy’s very high outright level all argue against a fully bearish stance. Instead, this looks like a market still defined by two simultaneous realities: abundant enough renewable and imported supply to pressure daily averages, and still-noticeable scarcity in late-day hours that keeps flexibility valuable.
For day-ahead and short-term traders, the practical bias remains fairly straightforward. Midday weakness should remain the easiest theme to express where solar and imports align, particularly in markets that continue to follow HUPX lower. Evening strength remains the counterweight, especially where solar drops faster than wind can compensate. Serbia and Montenegro look softer on outright price, but still exposed to regional ramp dynamics. Hungary remains the key pricing anchor for the northern part of the SEE complex, while Italy continues to provide the strongest structural export signal in the wider neighborhood. Albania stays the most idiosyncratic market in the daily set, where hydro conditions can widen deviations sharply from the rest of the region.
The underlying message from today’s session is not that the market has turned cheap. It is that the risk premium embedded in Tuesday’s prices was partially unwound once wind returned and Core inflows strengthened. That is a very different thing. With regional generation up 2.7 GW, wind up almost 2 GW, and Core imports up nearly 700 MW, the day-ahead complex had enough supply relief to sell off hard. But with Italy still near €150/MWh, Hungary still above €100/MWh, and evening hourly caps still stretching well above €170–230/MWh across several hubs, the region remains fundamentally tradable, volatile and far from comfortable.