Integrated Swiss Intraday market successfully launched
15-minute contracts for the first time available for cross-border trading
Leipzig / Paris, 27 June 2013. The Swiss Intraday market was successfully launched on 26 June 2013. It joins France, Germany and Austria as the fourth national market to be integrated using ComXerv, the commodity trading system provided by Deutsche Börse AG. ComXerv allows implicit cross-border transactions which lead to an efficient use of capacity on interconnectors.
Market participants of all four countries benefit from pooled liquidity and standardised trading and operational rules. ComXerv connects to the Intraday capacity platform run by the transmission system operators (TSOs), ensuring a non-discriminatory access to cross-border capacity. ComXerv uses existing infrastructure with minimal adaptation to current market rules. In 2012, 18 TWh were traded on EPEX SPOT’s Intraday markets, making ComXerv one of the most liquid and mature Intraday platforms for power trading in Europe.
15-minute contracts which were thus far available exclusively on the German Intraday market are now also available for trading in Switzerland and can for the first time be traded across borders (between Germany and Switzerland).
On the first trading day, 699 MWh were traded on the Swiss Intraday market. Hourly and 15-minute contracts were traded locally and across borders.
The integrated Swiss Intraday market has been made possible by the cooperation of the TSOs Amprion and TransnetBW in Germany, RTE in France and Swissgrid in Switzerland, the European Power Exchange EPEX SPOT SE and the clearing house European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC). Physical and financial settlement of the new power contracts for the Swiss Intraday market will be provided by ECC. In line with the processes on the German Intraday Market, ECC will also dispatch fully automated schedules to Swissgrid every 15 minutes.
The launch of an integrated Swiss Intraday market marks another milestone for Intraday power trading in Europe. It facilitates the implementation of the European Intraday Target Model.
The Swiss spot markets are key to the integration of the European power markets. “We are confident that we will continue to strengthen our close working relationship with Swiss stakeholders in order to benefit both Intraday and Day-Ahead markets”, says Jean-François Conil-Lacoste, Chairman of the Management Board of EPEX SPOT.
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EPEX SPOT SE operates the power spot markets for France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Day-Ahead and Intraday). Together these countries account for more than one third of the European electricity consumption. EPEX SPOT SE is a European company (Societas Europaea) based in Paris with a branch in Leipzig. 339 TWh were traded on EPEX SPOT’s power markets in 2012, of which 18 TWh on the Intraday markets.
European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC) is the central clearing house for energy and related products in Europe. In its capacity as the central counterparty ECC assumes clearing as well as physical and financial settlement of transactions concluded on CEGH Gas Exchange of the Vienna Stock Exchange, EEX, EPEX SPOT, HUPX, ICE ENDEX and Powernext. In addition, ECC offers clearing and settlement for those transactions which are registered for clearing on Exchanges.