After having completed over a dozen local implementation projects, the Nominated Electricity Market Operators (NEMOs) and Transmission System Operators (TSOs), among which Red Eléctrica de España is included, launched the European Cross-Border Intraday Market (XBID) on 12 June enabling a total of 14 European countries to begin continuous intraday trading of electricity.

This go-live marks a key milestone on the road towards creating a single integrated European intraday market. After the first two days of operation of this joint initiative, the NEMOs and TSOs involved expect an increase in the volume of electricity managed through this market, as XBID includes a shared intraday order book and introduces shared procedures for its management.

Spain is, together with Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, one of the 14 countries that have joined the XBID, which brings the whole European intraday continuous market together and complements the existing day ahead market.

The XBID 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.

XBID supports both explicit allocation on the German/French bidding zone border (as requested by the National Regulatory Authorities) and implicit continuous trading on all bidding zone borders of the 14 European countries mentioned. During 2019, other European countries will become part of XBID in a second ‘wave’ that will integrate more intraday markets.

The new mechanism launched by European NEMOs and TSOs is in line with the target that the EU has approved for European-wide intraday coupling, key to complete the creation of the European Internal Energy Market.

With the rising share of intermittent technologies of electricity production (mainly renewable) in the European generation mix, connecting intraday markets becomes an increasingly important tool to achieve the balance of the electricity system, which will also enable increased integration of more renewable generation into the electricity systems and greater overall efficiency in the trading of energy in the intraday horizon.

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