In the long-term, electricity is traded on a term longer than one month.
Forwards and futures are financial products, which are settled at spot market prices of future delivery periods.
Electricity is traded on a long-term basis in Belgium and the Netherlands on the ICE Endex energy exchange.
The day-ahead market and intraday market together are called the spot market.
There are several electricity trading platforms in Europe, such as EPEX (this is the spot market of EEX, the European Power Exchange) and NordPool.
The spot markets are divided into different market areas: Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria, United Kingdom and the Nordic countries.
On the day-ahead market, trading is done for the next day. E.g. for Belgium and the Netherlands this is EPEX SPOT and Nord Pool. The auction works as follows: participants should submit their bids before 12h in the afternoon. Bids are hourly for the following day, from 00h to 24h. Bidding results will be announced around 13h.
The day-ahead market is cross-border due to interconnectors between countries.
On the intraday market, it is possible to trade power in 15-minute, hourly or longer intervals. A trade must be completed at least five minutes before the time of delivery.
In practice, the predictions deviate from the effective take-up and injection.
The difference between the purchased or injected energy and the predicted energy causes an imbalance. The local grid operator contracts balancing reserves from market parties for this purpose.
These capacities can be used to eliminate surpluses or deficits. E.g. if the wind blows harder than predicted, the energy price will fall.
Our smart grid controller processes day-ahead and intraday prices to make the most economic decisions. Also, our controller can be deployed in the imbalanced market.
Reduce energy costs by smoothing peak consumption.
Frequency Containment Reserve, or primary reserve power and automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve.
Storage of production surpluses and shifting energy consumption over time.
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