Practical Experience from Energy Multimarket Short-term Trading

The transition from fossil‑fuelled, centralized generation to renewable and distributed energy resources has introduced new challenges for power system operation. Increasing uncertainty in renewable production has created a strong need for short‑term energy trading and has driven significant changes in European market design. Day‑ahead markets were the first step toward liberalized energy trading, but their fixed gate closure soon proved insufficient for variable generation. Two complementary solutions emerged: intraday continuous markets enabling trading close to real-time and liberalized balancing services allowing TSOs to procure balancing capacity and energy through short‑term auctions.