EPEX Spot Pursues Intraday Market Harmonisation
One single Intraday trading system - Cross border trading included - Positive feedback from EPEX Spot members.
Paris, 14/09/2010 – The German and French Intraday markets run by EPEX Spot will be fully integrated before the end of 2010: both markets will be operated with a single trading solution, ComXerv. This innovative market design paves the way for quicker and more flexible integration of the Intraday markets in Europe, closer to the needs of market players and other stakeholders.
France and Germany represent already today the most liquid continuous Intraday markets in Europe, over 10 TWh having been traded on the EPEX Spot platforms during the last 12 months. As a result of the integration, this liquidity will be bundled. As the ComXerv trading solution will be used in both market areas, it will allow EPEX Spot’s market participants to trade cross-border between France and Germany directly through the trading platform, using implicitly the cross-border capacity made available by the Transmission System Operators. This will simplify access to an extended and more liquid market place for all the market participants, since the cross-border capacity allocation and nomination process will be handled automatically by this new EPEX mechanism in a transparent way.
The market integration will be established in an accelerated implementation time and with a minimum change of existing market rules and infrastructures. The ComXerv trading platform will be connected to the existing Intraday Capacity Service, a 7 TSOs’ capacity platform already used on most of the German borders (DE-CH, DE-FR, DE-NL, DE-DK1). Market players will continue to have access for OTC capacity reservation, too. It means that for the first time implicit allocation of cross-border capacity will be done while preserving the possibility for the market players to choose which platform they wish to use for cross-border trading in a non-exclusive way.
With this market design EPEX Spot paves the way for quick and flexible integration of the Intraday markets in Europe. The Exchange Council approved the necessary modifications of the EPEX Exchange Rules on 7 September 2010. Furthermore, the solution was welcomed by a community of over 100 market participants and stakeholders that gathered at a workshop with the concerned French and German TSOs and EPEX Spot in Düsseldorf on 10 September 2010.
Integration of Intraday markets is crucial for the development of liquidity, in particular with respect to the integration of increasing renewable energy. France and Germany, the first hubs to be connected by EPEX Spot, represent together more than 1,000 TWh of yearly power consumption, which means over 30% of the total power consumption in Europe.
EPEX Spot SE is a Paris-based company under European law (Societas Europaea) with a branch in Leipzig. EEX and Powernext each hold 50 percent in the joint company, in which they integrated their entire spot power trading activities. The product range of EPEX Spot SE encompasses spot power trading (day ahead and intraday) for Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland. These countries account for more than one third of the European power consumption. In 2009, 203 TWh were traded on the EPEX Spot power markets.