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The Exchange Council of the European Power Exchange EPEX SPOT has approved the introduction of an Intraday market in Switzerland, scheduled to launch in Q2 2013. This new market responds to demands of the Exchange Members and will offer the possibility to access Intraday cross-border capacity with France and Germany directly through trading on the Exchange. 15-minute contracts, supporting a smoother integration of power from fluctuating energy sources and for the moment available on the German Intraday market only, will also be made available on the Swiss Intraday market from its start.
The launch of an integrated Swiss Intraday market will allow a fully optimized use of the cross-border Intraday capacity between France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. An integrated Intraday market also enables better management of close-to-real time volume risks, in particular with respect to the integration of renewable energy into the grid. Through implicit cross-border trading, liquidity of the connected Intraday markets will increase. Members will be able to trade 15-minute contracts between Germany and Switzerland.
Key for the integration is the harmonization of the Intraday capacity allocation mechanisms at the interconnections of the Franco-Swiss and German-Swiss borders with the solution already implemented on the Franco-German border since 2010. The transmission system operators (TSOs) Amprion and TransnetBW in Germany, RTE in France and Swissgrid in Switzerland explicitly allocate Intraday cross-border capacity through the existing Intraday Capacity Service in a continuous manner. This platform is currently used by eight TSOs on five borders. The TSOs will now offer a non-discriminatory access to cross-border capacity on the Franco-Swiss and German-Swiss borders: EPEX SPOT’s continuous Intraday trading system, ComXerv, will connect through a non-exclusive access to the platform. In parallel, explicit power trading via OTC between Switzerland and France respectively Germany will still be possible according to the applicable allocation rules on each border.
“The Exchange Council supports the launch of an integrated Swiss Intraday market because it is pragmatically using an existing and well-proven infrastructure”, says Peter Heydecker, Chairman of the Exchange Council. In so doing, a seamless migration to the European Intraday solution currently developed by the North Western European Price Coupling project is ensured.
The third Exchange Council in 2012 was held in Vienna on 5 December 2012 and chaired by Peter Heydecker, Head of Origination Gas & Power at Vitol.
