Negative price hours are reshaping how we underwrite yield
Spain logged 397 hours of negative power prices in Q1 2026, up from 48 hours a year earlier. Portugal posted 294. That’s not a blip.
Per AleaSoft and pv magazine’s Q1 tracking, it’s the shape of an Iberian grid absorbing more solar than the system was built to clear in real time.
From the design desk, this changes how we underwrite a greenfield project long before Ready-to-Build. Energy yield modelling used to stop at P90 output. Now it has to price curtailment hours and negative-price exposure on the merchant tail into the model from day one.
We’re seeing the same pattern in early-stage wind, where resource measurement — lidar, met mast — increasingly has to answer a second question alongside energy yield: what does this site’s output curve look like against an increasingly negative midday price?
It’s a reminder that “bankable” now has a market-timing dimension. It’s also why what we learn on the design desk in Portugal and Spain increasingly shapes how we screen sites across our African and Gulf pipeline — different curtailment risk, same underwriting discipline.
How are you adjusting yield assumptions for negative-price hours in your own models?
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