Nord Pool, Europe’s leading power market, has - in advance of BREXIT - announced changes it will make to its popular GB auctions.
From 1 January 2021, the UK will leave the European Internal Energy Market (IEM). As a result, Nord Pool’s day-ahead (N2EX) auction will, from that date, have a new gate closure time of 09:50 GMT (currently 11:00 GMT) with results available no later than 10:00 GMT (currently 11:42 GMT).
In the island of Ireland the SEM-GB intraday auctions (IDA1 & IDA2) will continue to operate with shared order books between power exchanges, offering implicit capacity between the island of Ireland and GB.
Announcing the proposed auction changes Emma McKiernan, Director Nordic, Baltic, UK and Ireland at Nord Pool said: “We are acutely aware that BREXIT has created uncertainty across many areas of our customers’ businesses. Against that backdrop we feel it is important to provide clarity now regarding our own arrangements from 1 January 2021, to give our customers time to prepare.”
Nord Pool’s GB market (known at the time as N2EX) was formed in January 2010 in response to a Power Trading Forum tender aiming to establish a liquid and transparent GB power market.
It provides a robust index price for power, developed by the market for the market, producing the principle index for GB day-ahead power over the past decade. Nord Pool’s N2EX is the largest most liquid GB day-ahead market with 94 TWh traded in 2019.
Last month the EU Commission announced that, irrespective of a trade deal being agreed, the UK will leave the IEM from 1 January 2021. As a result the GB day-ahead market and order books will no longer be coupled externally with the rest of Europe, nor internally within GB.
Emma McKiernan added: “While we continue to work with key stakeholders to investigate continuing a shared day-ahead order book post BREXIT, no such arrangements are in place at this late stage. That means we must now focus on operating a standalone auction while encouraging our customers to prepare accordingly.
“We have consulted with customers and aligned with interconnector operators regarding the explicit capacity auctions and our new auction timing.
“Our customers have told us it is critical they have enough time to prepare bids for the day-ahead auction after final results from the explicit capacity auctions across the various interconnectors are available. Our new auction timing provides 30 minutes in which they can do this.”
Explicit capacity auctions will be staggered throughout the morning, starting with the BritNed interconnector, followed by IFA, IFA2 and finally Nemo Link.
Emma McKiernan continued: “Customers have also been clear that there is a need for us to leave sufficient time after we publish the day-ahead results, for customers to prepare bids for the Single Day Ahead Coupling auctions in Europe. Our new auction timing gives them exactly one hour for this.”
For further information, visit our website www.nordpoolgroup.com.
About Nord Pool
Nord Pool, Europe’s leading power market, delivers efficient, simple and secure trading across Europe. The company offers day-ahead and intraday trading, clearing and settlement to customers regardless of size or location. Today 360 companies from 20 countries trade on Nord Pool’s markets.
Nord Pool operates markets in the Nordic and Baltic regions, Germany, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and the UK. Nord Pool is a Nominated Electricity Market Operator (NEMO) in 15 European countries, while also servicing power markets in Croatia and Bulgaria. In 2019 Nord Pool had a total turnover of 494 TWh traded power. The company has offices in Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, London and Berlin.
Nord Pool has 25 years of power market experience built on offering flexibility, transparency, innovation, greater choice and participation to our customers.
Oslo, 19 October 2020
For further information, please contact:
Stuart Disbrey, +44 7887 409044 - [email protected]