Intraday Markets

After the day-ahead market is cleared, the intraday market opens. Through the intraday market, buyers and sellers can adjust their order volumes in line with better demand or renewable feed-in forecasts or unexpected power plant outages. On the intraday market, it is possible to trade power continuously in quarter-hourly, one hour, or even longer intervals. As soon as a buy bid matches a sell bid, a trade is concluded. A deal needs to be completed at least 5 minutes before delivery.

The platform for day-ahead and intraday trade is the spot market. There are multiple different spot exchanges for electricity in Europe, such as EPEX or NordPool. While they share the same trading platform, day-ahead and intraday markets have different price-setting procedures. Day-ahead trades are subject to a market clearing principle, where the last accepted bid sets the price for all transactions. Prices in intraday trading are set via the pay-as-bid principle, meaning that the trade deal is completed as soon as a sell bid is accepted by a buyer.

In contrast to the long-term market for bilateral trades between individual consumers, producers, or third parties, the day-ahead and intraday markets are only accessible for Balance Responsible Parties (BRPs).