Yesterday, on 19th November 2019, the company OTE, a.s., (market operator, OTE), joined successfully the European Single Intraday Coupling (SIDC) of electricity markets, in the frame of the 2nd wave implementation. At 13:00 CET, the trading for the delivery day 19th November opened within SIDC. Till the end of the day, this trading was going on without cross-border capacities allocation, only in the frame of the Czech Republic. Immediately after the trading opened, first 4 bids were submitted through the platform, coming from four different electricity traders. From the market participants perspective, the trading was going on as usually, in the frame of the Czech Republic, nonetheless the matching of orders was proceeded already in the new system XBID. The first matching of orders, leading to the first trade, was realized at 13:23 CET.

Trading for the delivery day 20th November 2019 started on 19th November 2019 at 15:00 CET. Cross-border capacities for that day were submitted by the TSOs at 21:55 CET. From this moment on there have been bids submitted on foreign platforms up to the level of available cross-border capacities visible and available to Czech market participants. The first cross-border trade occurred only 1 minute later. During the first 15 minutes, 70 trades were concluded, of which 60 were cross-border, with a total volume of 331 MWh. During the first 2 hours of cross-border trading, more than 1,000 trades with a total volume of 1,400 MWh were concluded on the delivery day 20th November 2019. During the night there were trades between the Czech Republic and countries such as Germany, Finland, Spain, Estonia, Croatia and others.

Aleš Tomec, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of OTE company stated: „We achieved one of OTE company strategic goals after seven years of intensive work on the preparation of XBID project assignment, followed by countless meetings in international groups and search for optimal solutions. For market participants and consumers in the Czech Republic it means that the electricity is not limited by borders and can be traded almost throughout the whole continent within the intraday market. The next great milestone will be coupling of the day-ahead markets, where we hope for the same success in the following year or 2021 at latest.”

Igor Chemišinec, a Member of the Board of Directors of OTE company concluded: „It is a breakthrough in international trading with electricity and fulfilment of CACM regulation in the Czech Republic. I would like to thank all participating parties and OTE employees for their excellent work.”

Second go-live of the single intraday coupling (SIDC, formerly also known as XBID) has expanded the continuous trading of electricity across the following countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. They have joined the existing countries already operating the SIDC: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Press release.pdf