Vienna/Paris, 16 April 2012 – The Austrian Transmission System Operator, Austrian Power Grid AG (APG), and the European Power Exchange EPEX SPOT SE have initiated a common project aiming at the development and tighter integration of Austria in the European electricity market. As EPEX SPOT’s trusted partner for clearing, Europe’s central clearing house for energy, European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC), is also working closely with APG and EPEX SPOT to achieve this goal.
In a first step, EPEX SPOT will open an Intraday market in the control zone of APG. While the hub will be set-up as an independent market, it will be connected to the German and French Intraday markets of EPEX SPOT from the start via an interface provided by APG. Furthermore, trading on the Austrian hub will be possible on the basis of the same harmonized trading system and rules as for the German and French markets.
Not only intraday trading within Austria will be facilitated: Austrian, French and German market participants will also benefit directly from the pooled liquidity of these Intraday markets, with a facilitated and secured access to cross-border trading. The already existing mechanism for cross-border schedules nomination will not be affected by this new development and remain transparently available for all interested market participants.
Physical and financial settlement of the transactions concluded on EPEX SPOT markets will be provided by ECC, offering to market participants an integrated and automated clearing process, together with the benefits of an important network of partners and maximum cross-margining effects from all EPEX SPOT markets.
This first project step sets the basis for a second development phase, leading to even more significant improvements of cross-border intraday trading between Germany and Austria: APG and EPEX SPOT have already started working with other concerned parties to synchronize as far as possible the local and cross-border trading gate closure times on the Power Exchange, in order to enable cross-border trading closer to real-time.
The existence of an organized Intraday market in Austria is a prerequisite and an important milestone for implementing the Pan-European Target Model for continuous implicit Intraday trading, as described in the ACER Framework Guidelines on Capacity Allocation and Congestion Management. This crucial development will further integrate the Austrian and German Intraday markets, resulting into further liquidity pooling and allowing the market participants to better balance the open commercial positions close to real-time.
Subject to successful testing of the procedures, the Austrian Intraday market is scheduled to be launched at the beginning of the third quarter of 2012. Further information regarding trading modalities will be communicated in the next weeks by EPEX SPOT.
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Austrian Power Grid AG (APG) is Austria’s independent transmission operator and as such responsible for the domestic high-voltage grid. The APG grid spans about 3.500 km of power lines, which are constantly managed, maintained and further developed along the increasing economic needs by a team of 450 specialists. In close cooperation with the TSOs of fellow European states the APG grid lays the foundation for the realization of a free European electricity market. VERBUND AG holds 100% shares within APG.
EPEX SPOT SE operates the power spot markets for France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Day Ahead and Intraday). Together these countries account for more than one third of the European electricity consumption. EPEX SPOT is a Paris-based company under European law (Societas Europaea) with a branch in Leipzig. A volume of 84.2 TWh has been traded in Q1 2012 on the EPEX SPOT power markets.