Unscheduled downtime on the XBID system, Saturday 6 September 2025 temporarily affecting system availability due to XBID service provider issues.
On Saturday 6 September 2025, on the SIDC market, the XBID system (used for intraday trading), experienced a total downtime of over 10 hours, including unscheduled downtime from 9:15 until 17:50.
The scheduled maintenance of the XBID system hosting infrastructure, originally requested by the XBID service provider, had been planned to take place from 7:00 until 9:15. However, the server maintenance had to be extended due to unforeseen technical and infrastructure issues, which were identified during the process, on the XBID service provider’s side. This led to unscheduled downtime of the system, affecting its availability for several hours and bringing to a halt the entire SIDC continuous market, as well as negatively impacting IDA 3 execution on 6 September.
The XBID system was finally made available again at 17:50 on 6 September. Normal trading operations were resumed and the system has been fully operational since.
An in-depth investigation is currently underway. SIDC parties have requested that the XBID service provider should identify the root cause of the unscheduled downtime and also ensure that future maintenance can be completed as planned, without any similar negative impact.
The SIDC parties remain committed to maintaining the highest standards of operational resilience and transparency with the market and sincerely apologise for this unintended disruption to the normal trading schedule. Updates will be provided as soon as the investigation process is completed.
About SIDC:
The Single Intraday Coupling (SIDC) is a market mechanism in the intraday timeframe defined in the CACM Regulation based on continuous trading and complemented by three intraday auctions (so called “IDAs”).
The SIDC continuous trading solution is based on a common IT system with one Shared Order Book, a Capacity Management Module and a Shipping Module. It allows for orders entered by market participants for continuous matching in one bidding zone to be matched by orders similarly submitted by market participants in any other bidding zone within the European Intraday Coupling as long as transmission capacity is available. The intraday solution supports both explicit allocation (where approved by the respective National Regulatory Authorities) and implicit continuous trading. It is in line with the EU Target model for an integrated intraday market.
In addition, SIDC IDAs allow for the pricing of cross-border capacity in the intraday timeframe. IDAs are implicit auctions where collected orders are matched, and cross-zonal capacity is allocated simultaneously for different bidding zones, determining clearing prices for each bidding zone.
European-wide intraday coupling is a key component for completing the European Internal Energy Market. With the rising share of intermittent generation in the European generation mix, connecting intraday markets through cross-border trading is an increasingly important tool for market parties to keep positions balanced. The purpose of the SIDC is to increase the overall efficiency of intraday trading.
For additional information on SIDC go to:
http://www.nemo-committee.eu/sidc
https://www.nemo-committee.eu/ida
https://www.entsoe.eu/network_codes/cacm/implementation/sidc/
https://www.entsoe.eu/network_codes/cacm/implementation/ida/