European Internal Energy Market advances with second wave of the Single Intraday Coupling

European Single Intraday Coupling (SIDC) Parties confirm successful 2nd wave go-live. Significant increases in traded volumes reported across the 7 countries which joined the SIDC coupling last week. Pan-European trading now in place across 21 countries coupled through SIDC. System performing well. 

Nominated Electricity Market Operators (NEMOs) and Transmission System Operators (TSOs) confirm the successful go-live of the second launch of SIDC (formerly known as XBID). In the first two hours after cross-border trading opened on 19th November, OTE, the Czech NEMO, reported that more than 1 000 trades were completed for delivery on 20th November. The Croatian NEMO, CROPEX, recorded trades with market participants in 16 different countries including Norway and Spain. HUPX, the Hungarian NEMO, reported an increase in traded volumes of nearly 14 times in the five days following go-live, compared to the five prior to the launch. In Bulgaria, IBEX states that the average number of trades has doubled since the go-live and OPCOM, the Romanian NEMO, also reports a near doubling of both traded volumes and number of trades. In Slovenia, BSP Southpool has stated that for the period after go-live, compared to the equivalent period in 2018, it has seen an eight-fold increase in traded volume (11 672 MWh compared to 1 425 MWh). Meanwhile in Poland, TGE has achieved a daily average of over 2 000 MWh since go-live, which is a more than nine-fold increase when compared to the 2018 intraday daily average of 212 MWh. 

Marking another important step towards expanding the single integrated European Intraday market, the successful SIDC go-live expanded the continuous trading of electricity across the following countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. They joined the existing countries already operating the SIDC: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. A 3rd wave go-live is expected by the end of 2020. 

The SIDC solution is based on a common IT system with one Shared Order Book (SOB), a Capacity Management Module (CMM) and a Shipping Module (SM). 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 project's reach as long as transmission capacity is available. The intraday solution supports both explicit allocation on the Croatian/Slovenian and French/German borders (as requested by the respective National Regulatory Authorities, NRAs) and implicit continuous trading. It is in line with the EU Target model for an integrated intraday market. 

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 initiative is to increase the overall efficiency of intraday trading.