Interconnector BritNed has launched a ‘Dutch’ auction, dubbed ‘Buy Now’, that allows participants to acquire capacity before, during and after the regular Intraday auctions.
The ‘Buy Now’ auctions are offered for every hour of the day, in both directions, providing there is sufficient transfer available. Auctions open 30 minutes ahead of the standard Intraday auctions and continue to run – if the capacity is not purchased – until just five minutes before the Nomination Gate closure of that hour.
Nils Teipel, Commercial Operations & Planning Manager at BritNed, explained that “When the Buy Now offer is published, the price will automatically begin to decrease from the starting price in equal price steps every 15 seconds. The first participant that selects the purchase button on the Empire interface, or issues the respective API call, will acquire the offered capacity at its current price. The longer the auction continues without the capacity being purchased, the further the price will decrease.”
He added, “Participants can acquire transmission rights before the regular Intraday auction, therefore, capacity can be secured in advance, alongside acquiring transmission rights after the regular Intraday auction and during the open nomination gate.”
Buy Now has been operating for seven days, in which time it has been used to allocate 1984MW of Intraday capacity. Capacity was primarily sold in 5MW offers, with the lowest offer secured at €0.08 MW. Capacity was secured closer to the delivery period than possible with regular Intraday auctions on most occasions, including capacity being secured just nine minutes before the closure of the Nomination gate.
The launch of Buy Now comes six months after BritNed released Empire, a new allocation and nomination platform that replaced three legacy systems.