Italian April power imports drop on NTC restrictions

Market: Electricity
30/04/24

Italian net electricity imports fell to their lowest in more than a year in April owing to significant constraints in net transfer capacity (NTC) from France to Italy, supporting an increase in domestic generation.

Net imports averaged 4.7GW in April, down from 7GW in March and well below 6.7GW in the same month last year, according to data from Italian transmission system operator Terna. This was the country's tightest net importing position for any month since August.

Italian imports from France saw the largest year-on-year decline, averaging 1.5GW compared with 2.7GW in April last year. This was Italy's lowest net imports since August 2022. Imports from Switzerland also fell on the year, declining by 500MW to 2.3GW, the lowest since August last year (see chart).

The steep drop in imports to Italy's north zone is largely a result of significant reduction in the available NTC on France's eastern borders.

Since early March, strong commercial exports through all of France's eastern borders, combined with low availability of the French power grid because of planned and unplanned outages, have led to "an extremely tense situation" for the French transmission system, the country's grid operator RTE has said. These factors have led to soaring physical flows and security issues on some interconnectors on the France-Switzerland and France-Italy borders.

RTE on 5 March reduced the day-ahead NTC on the France-Italy border from a scheduled 4.5GW to 1.6GW, but the measure proved "insufficient to mitigate operational issues", RTE said. The overloads, although close to the France-Italy border, were induced by high commercial exports on all of France's eastern borders, including those with Belgium and Germany. RTE consequently applied additional safety measures to guarantee the operational security of the grid, such as lowering the NTC on the France-Switzerland border from 2.5GW to 2GW.

Export constraints have resulted in French prices remaining at a significant discount to Italy, with the French spot index delivering at an average discount of €59.13/MWh in April compared with €35.37/MWh in March and €28.61/MWh in April last year.

And falling Italian imports have driven a 2GW year-on-year increase in domestic generation to 24.6GW in April, while Italian power demand has remained virtually stable at 28.8GW. Minimum temperatures in Milan averaged 6.6°C on 1-30 April, up from 5.3°C in March and above 5.7°C in April last year.

RTE is expecting some NTC curtailments until the beginning of May and from August to mid-October, it said.

By Timothy Santonastaso

Italian imports by country GW

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