Analyses of the Outcomes of the Intraday Continuous Trading Market in Europe: The French Case

In the evolving landscape of electricity markets, Intra-Day Markets (IDMs) have become pivotal, providing energy traders with the flexibility to exchange electricity throughout the day. These markets allow to fine-tune schedules set after the closure of the Day-Ahead Market (DAM). In Europe, IDMs are structured with a hybrid approach involving both auction-based and continuous trading mechanisms. The European energy landscape adopted an intra-day market with continuous trading in 2018, implemented by the Single Intraday Market Coupling (SIDC) project. The main aim of the analyses carried out is to evaluate the efficiency gains of a hybrid market like SIDC with a focus of this study on the 2020 French market data. The statistical analyses show that, despite the availability of half-hourly products for trading, agents tend to prefer trading on an hourly basis, given the convenience of finding profitable matches. Furthermore, agents often place bids at the median price point during continuous trading to facilitate successful matches. Another noteworthy observation concerns price volatility, which exhibits a notable increase during the final hours of the market.