SIDC: Expansion of 30 and 15 minute products and Revised Local Implementation Project 14 Go-Live

The Nominated Electricity Market Operators (NEMOs) and Transmission System Operators (TSOs) involved in the European Single Intraday Coupling (SIDC – formerly XBID) are pleased to announce one year after 2nd wave go-live, the extension of the continuous intraday product suite for cross-border trading, i.e. 30 and 15 minute products will be newly available on several borders. In the meantime, Local Implementation Project 14 has revised its timeline and scope.

As an important step towards the better market integration of renewables, smaller granularity cross-border products for continuous trading will be made available on a number of borders from 10th December 2020. The first tradable delivery periods for these products will differ based on local NEMO arrangements. Delivery for the Austrian-Hungarian border will be possible from 11th December, delivery for other borders will be possible after products’ activation (expected not before 11:00 CET on 10th December) following local gate closure time arrangements.
30 minute products will be introduced on the French-Belgian border, 15 minute products on the Austrian-Hungarian border, and 15 as well as 30 minute products on the Belgian-German, Belgian-Dutch and Dutch-German borders.

This will provide Dutch and Belgian market participants with access to the existing liquidity of 30 minute products already available in France and Germany. In addition, the already coupled intraday market for 15 minute products of Austria, Germany and Slovenia, will be extended to Belgium, Hungary and the Netherlands.

Bids made for 15, 30 and 60 minute products can then be matched against other bids with the same time resolution. Thus, a bid for a 15 minute product will be matched with another bid for a 15 minute product. The implementation of a cross-product matching functionality in the SIDC platform, by virtue of which 15, 30 and 60 minute products could be matched against each other, is currently under investigation.

Meanwhile, NEMOs and TSOs cooperating in the Local Implementation Project (LIP) 14, which aims to integrate Italian borders (IT-FR, IT-AT and IT-SI) into the already coupled intraday region, have announced a revision of the project timeline due to the obligation of some parties to work on several European initiatives in parallel. According to the new timeline, the go-live window is planned for May 2021.

In addition, Greek borders (GR-IT and GR-BG), initially foreseen to go-live in the framework of LIP 14, are expected to become operational in the project´s 4th wave go-live along with Slovak borders of LIP 17 (SK-CZ, SK-PL, SK-HU). A 3rd wave pre-launch event is being planned in Q1 2021 to brief stakeholders ahead of go-live. A trial period with market parties is also being arranged to provide opportunities for new users to gain familiarity with the SIDC solution and undertake their own tests.

SIDC currently couples the continuous intraday markets of 22 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. 

About SIDC:
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.