[CraigRood]

I'm far from an expert here but isn't that spot price rather than future deliveries? Few people pay for actual spot pricing because it can go the other way, and you want known pricing. You would have a forward contract to delivery gas at say 20p. This is a known price for operation and likely has profit baked in anyway. The excess is what we see now. They can't just switch off as they have a contract to fulfill, but the grid doesn't need the excess, therefore priced at a negative.

[tialaramex]

In https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... under "Why does the price of gas drive electricity prices?" it suggests that, at the time the CMA report linked was written (now over 10 years ago) the CMA thought as much as 40% of electricity is traded at spot prices.

Now, the CMA report that's linking is talking about a world we no longer live in, in that world the UK burns coal, Russia hasn't invaded Ukraine and so on, and thus the numbers might be entirely different now, but that's the best I could find.