Incident experienced yesterday on EPEX SPOT auctions identified and fixed

The auction will run today as usual

Paris, 27 October 2011

Dear Members and Partners,

The incident experienced yesterday on day-ahead auctions has been identified and fixed.  The auctions will run as usual today.

EPEX SPOT primary datacenter experienced a micro power cut yesterday morning. This micro electrical interruption did not affect the physical machines themselves since all back-up equipment took over as expected. However these interruptions caused instability in the communication between ETS (EPEX SPOT trading system) and its central database which was from time to time disconnected from the application server. This instability could not be repaired with the quick usual procedures (including restart of the servers) that are implemented in such situations. When the problem was finally identified, EPEX SPOT and its provider decided not to intervene on the communication between ETS and its database as the trading sessions were too much in progress to perform this sensitive operation.

ETS remained therefore instable for the whole sessions which explains all the problems the members and the exchange encountered: difficulty to submit orders, delay in sending the market results on the system and finally delay in dispatching the individual results.

After the trading session, the IT team and the provider made a complete restart and check-up of the whole configuration of ETS and performed complete review and tests to make sure that the system is now in a stable state.

EPEX SPOT and its providers are still investigating what happened. Based on these reports, we will take all necessary measures to reinforce our systems. Our software provider has already put in place a special procedure which would be applied to avoid the major disturbance we experienced yesterday if the situation would occur again. ETS will be closely monitored by our IT and software providers in the coming days.

During the session, in order to cope with the problem of members unable to submit their orders, EPEX SPOT activated the procedure of “trading on behalf” (art. 4.9 of the operational rules). The Market Operations Department has received much more orders than it was able to physically and securely enter into the system. Best efforts were made to enter as much orders as possible, although it is very likely that not all the orders or the latest version of the orders sent by the members have been entered.

As a first urgent step, we encourage all the members to check their positions for delivery on 27/10. In case of unbalances, the members have to decide whether they want to settle them on the intraday markets.

EPEX SPOT sales team (contacts below) can be contacted if you need support to find counterparts to flatten their positions.

We apologize again to all our members and the members of the other markets for the inconvenience that this incident has caused.

If needed we will keep you informed about the development of the situation and we stay at your disposal for any inquiry you may have.

Yours faithfully,

Celine MAURER
Director, Market Operations