Electricity prices tomorrow: when they arrive and what sets them

Tomorrow’s electricity prices are published in the early afternoon — normally around 13:00 Danish time — once the day-ahead auction on the Nord Pool power exchange has cleared. From that moment, tomorrow’s price is fixed for every quarter-hour of the day, and you can see them on the electricity prices page as soon as they are out. Before the auction clears, there are no official prices for tomorrow — only forecasts.

When do tomorrow’s prices arrive?

The electricity market in Denmark and the rest of the Nordics settles one day ahead: every morning, producers and retailers tell Nord Pool how much they want to sell and buy in each interval of the coming day. The auction clears around midday, and the result — one price per quarter-hour for each price area — is typically published around 13:00. On rare days the auction is delayed and prices arrive later.

In practice this means:

• In the morning you only know the rest of today’s prices — tomorrow is not yet set.
• From early afternoon you can see all of tomorrow and plan around it: dishwasher, laundry, EV charging — or let your control system do it for you.

Since October 2025 the market settles in quarter-hours instead of whole hours. Most overviews — ours included — show hourly averages by default because they read fastest, with the quarters one tap away.

What sets tomorrow’s prices?

The price in each quarter-hour is where supply meets demand in the auction. The main drivers:

• Wind and solar forecasts. A windy day ahead typically means low prices — calm, grey weather pushes them up. This is why prices can swing so much from day to day.
• Consumption forecasts. Cold days and the late-afternoon peak lift demand.
• Fuel and CO2 prices. When gas or coal plants are needed to cover demand, their costs set the price.
• Interconnectors to neighbouring countries. Denmark is tightly connected to Norway, Sweden and Germany; cable capacity decides how much cheap power can flow in — and is also why DK1 and DK2 can have different prices.

In extreme situations the price can go negative — that happens when there is more production than anyone can use. That phenomenon has its own article on negative electricity prices.

Remember: the spot price is not your whole price

Tomorrow’s published prices are raw spot prices. On top come the retailer’s markup, the grid company’s tariff (which itself varies across the day), Energinet’s tariffs, electricity tax and VAT. On the electricity prices page you can enter your postcode and see the full price hour by hour — including a breakdown of what each part costs.

From following prices to earning from them

Shifting consumption after tomorrow’s prices can be done by hand, but it makes sense to let a control system do it automatically. NM1 is working on exactly that kind of price-based control — it is coming soon. Today, NM1 bids households’ flexibility into Energinet’s reserve markets, which also clear in daily auctions. How that works, and what your home can earn from it, is covered in the article on grid balancing for households — or read the background on how prices arise at all in the article on electricity prices hour by hour.