German Intraday market: EPEX SPOT welcomes avoidance of serious regression through joint effort

EPEX SPOT, together with German TSOs and relevant authorities, has avoided a serious regression on the continuous German Intraday market, which would have limited trading within the first 3 hours to the respective German TSO control area.

Currently, cross-zonal capacities between the four German TSO control areas for Intraday trading are only made available at 6 pm the day before. However, the single EU cross-zonal intraday market opens already at 3 pm. Therefore, orders sent by market participants within the first 3 hours are matched across all four German TSO control areas and nominated at 6pm when internal borders open.

A change request recently submitted to the European Single Intraday Coupling solution (SIDC) would have technically restricted Intraday trading in the first 3 hours to the respective TSO control area in Germany. Consequently, EPEX SPOT has alerted market participants, authorities and relevant stakeholders about this serious regression which would have artificially split the German Intraday market liquidity.

Today, we are pleased to announce that the joint effort with the German TSOs and the authorities led to the resolution of the issue. In the future, German TSOs will be providing infinite cross-zonal capacity between the four German TSO control areas between 3 and 6pm, enabling trading across Germany within SIDC. We would like to thank German TSOs and BNetzA for their reactivity and their support.