Brussels, 12 September 2007 | Now that the implementation of day-ahead electricity negotiation markets, including cross-border trades, is underway in most of the electricity systems in Europe, it is the right time to generalise electricity trading using market mechanisms in the intraday timeframe (following the day-ahead market up to close to delivery). The important growth of renewable generation, with the inherent difficulty in predicting at the day-ahead time the production, also requires efficient market mechanisms for adjusting and balancing the positions of the market actors. The importance of including cross-border trading in the intraday market mechanism is also evident especially for small systems well connected to bigger systems and, in general, in achieving the objective of an integrated European electricity system.
Power Exchanges have proven their ability to manage independent, transparent and equal opportunity day-ahead markets and are in an excellent position to facilitate cross-border intra-day markets by utilising their existing contractual relations with participants and System Operators and also their platforms. The paper summarises the main reasons why intra-day trading is important, what are the critical issues to consider in designing the markets in this time frame and why Power Exchanges can help in managing solutions for this kind of markets. Finally, the paper adds two appendices summarising the organisation and main results of two successful cross-border intra-day markets provided by Power Exchanges that have been in operation for several years.
Please find the position paper attached.
