The four Power Exchanges and 13 Transmission System Operators (TSOs) in the North-Western Europe (NWE) day-ahead price coupling project have successfully launched NWE Price Coupling. For the first time, the NWE region, stretching from France to Finland, operates under a common day-ahead power price calculation using the Price Coupling of Regions (PCR) solution. The same solution is also used at the same time in the SWE (South Western Europe) region in a common synchronised mode. Henceforward Power Exchanges from countries which account for 75% (more than 2000 TWh) of European electric consumption, for the first time, calculate electricity prices at the same time and in the same way.
Price coupling allows cross-border transmission capacity to be used directly by Power Exchanges’ day-ahead markets – a mechanism known as implicit allocation. The PCR solution has been developed by European Power Exchanges to provide a single algorithm and harmonised operational procedures for efficient price calculation and use of European cross-border transmission capacity, calculated and offered to the market in a coordinated way by TSOs.
The 17 partners of this project comprise APX, Belpex, EPEX SPOT and Nord Pool Spot from the Power Exchanges’ side; 50Hertz, Amprion, Creos, Elia, Energinet.dk, Fingrid, National Grid, RTE, Statnett, Svenska Kraftnät, Tennet (Netherlands), TenneT (Germany) and TransnetBW from the TSO side.