Indices: Signals with purpose
The power trading services by EPEX SPOT have a double purpose: It helps members to balance their portfolios across Europe – and the resulting prices are sending crucial economic signals to the whole industry. This is why we developed further indices, catering specific market needs.
Since power exchanges have been created, their price signal has evolved to become the fixed star of the power trading sector. The sheer number of buy and sell orders of organised markets, their aggregation and matching creates crucial price signals which guide production strategies and trigger investment decisions.
Today, EPEX SPOT is a premier service provider of market data, catering the specific needs of different actors of the electricity industry. By creating new advanced indices, our teams empower trading on EPEX SPOT screens and increase the value of power market data. These indices participate in maximising the value of our market characteristics and of our trading participant portfolio diversity. So that market participants, but also the energy industry as a whole can benefit from them.
Day-Ahead: the obvious reference
Thanks to its trading systems’ investment-driven growth of liquidity, the Day-Ahead market still is the backbone of short-term power trading. While day-ahead markets have reached mature times, the day-ahead price index – with its number of daily participants and substantial daily traded volumes – paints a key picture of the power system balance value one day ahead of delivery. The Day-Ahead base price is a pillar of European power trading and Market Coupling, serving as anchor point for the Futures market.
Intraday: Value flexibility and unforeseen imbalances
Looking at the shorter timeframe, having an Intraday price index attributes a value to the power that is traded under last call for optimisation and balancing. Members, but also regulators and many other stakeholders can use the Intraday indices in different ways to:
- Benchmark their own trading activity;
- Market Intraday imbalances;
- To use it in simulations for forecast;
- Commercialise their products and services;
- As well as an Intraday reference.
We decided to offer three indices – reflecting the effective business needs of our clients.
Three indices, three purposes
The IDFull index
The IDFull index is the weighted average price of all continuous trades executed during the full trading session of any EPEX SPOT continuous contract. This index includes the entire market liquidity and thus represents the obvious intraday market price reference for each contract. This index can easily be compared against the Day-Ahead index to value the overall intraday imbalance and flexibility.
The ID3 index
The ID3 index is the weighted average price of all continuous trades executed within the last 3 hours before delivery of a contract. This index focuses on the most liquid timeframe of a continuous contract trading session.
of the liquidity bulk is comprised in it for most liquid contracts.
It reveals the imbalance of the system close to delivery and catches the dynamics of this trading window. As such, this ID3 presents large business interest for EPEX SPOT customers to market their offers or challenge their intraday trading activity.
The ID1 index
The ID1 index is the weighted average price of all continuous trades executed within the last hour before delivery of a contract. This index catches the market’s last-minute imbalance needs, reflecting amongst others the increasing impact of renewables with steep load curves, as well as the system balancing flexibility. It can be used by renewable and flexibility asset owners to value their asset’s flexibility and intermittency on Intraday market.
Optimal market transparency
In the past years, we have steadily revamped our website to increase the accessibility and visibility of the day-to-day market data. Today, members can access up to 3 months of historical market data on the website via table view and up to 15 months via graph view – allowing for the visualisation of data for a longer period, easily accessible via mobile. Companies interested in market data can buy an access via the EPEX SPOT webshop.
We have become the most transparent exchange in Europe
And by providing top-notch market data services since the beginning of EPEX SPOT including unique aggregated curves auction data and real-time API access to continuous market data, we have become the most transparent exchange in Europe.
