May 10, 2026
Spain’s power bill glow-up
Spain just became one of Europe's cheapest power markets. Here is how
Cheap power, hot arguments: Spain’s energy win has commenters absolutely fighting
TLDR: Spain’s power got much cheaper after wind and solar pushed gas out of the driver’s seat. Commenters are split between calling it a renewable success, a grid-risk warning, or a misleading win helped by Spain being partly insulated from the rest of Europe.
Spain just pulled off a plot twist few people saw coming: its wholesale electricity prices have crashed to €44 per megawatt-hour, making it one of Europe’s cheapest power markets while countries like Italy, Germany, and the UK are paying way more. The basic story is simple enough for non-energy nerds: Spain added a lot of wind and solar, used less gas, and because gas plants were setting the price less often, the market got cheaper. On paper, it’s a clean success story. In the comments? Absolute chaos.
One camp is basically yelling, “See? Renewables work!” They’re cheering falling solar and battery costs and predicting the rest of Europe will soon copy Spain’s formula. Another camp is slamming the brakes hard. Some commenters insist Spain’s low prices are not really a green miracle at all, but a quirk of geography and limited power links with the rest of Europe — meaning Spain is cheap partly because it’s less exposed to the continent’s mess. Then came the moral outrage squad, dragging in Spain’s reported purchases of Russian liquefied gas and calling the whole thing “moral bankruptcy.”
And of course, no online energy debate is complete without apocalypse posting. One furious reply basically turned into a caps-lock siren about grid instability: “YES THEY DID” go too far on wind and solar. So yes, Spain’s prices are down, but the real entertainment is the comment section turning one electricity chart into a referendum on climate policy, European politics, and whether cheap power is a triumph or a trap.
Key Points
- •Spain’s average wholesale electricity price was €44/MWh in the first four months of 2026, lower than Italy (€127), Germany (€96), and the UK (€103), according to the article.
- •The article says Spain’s generation mix has shifted dramatically over 25 years, with coal effectively disappearing and gas falling to roughly 19% of generation while wind and solar expanded strongly.
- •In 2025, wind supplied 20% of Spain’s electricity generation and solar 22%, making their combined output larger than any other single generation category.
- •The article identifies 2022 as the turning point when wind and solar first generated more electricity than all fossil sources combined; by Q1 2026, wind and solar were at 44% of generation versus 17% for fossil fuels.
- •Using a methodology based on Zakeri et al. (2023), the article estimates that gas set Spain’s wholesale electricity price in about 55% of hours in 2022, 27% in 2024, and 9% in the first four months of 2026.