Summer 2025

Launching the quarterly Balancing Market Watch

Europe’s balancing markets are vital for flexibility and grid stability – but fast-changing and complex. Magnus Energy and Balancing.Services launch the Quarterly Balancing Market Watch to bring clear insights into the latest trends and results.

In Europe, balancing markets have been essential for securing and activating the flexibility needed to ensure operational security in case of frequency deviations. Their design has been subject to multiple national evolutions and European integration efforts.

For (prospective) Balancing Service Providers (BSPs), these markets represent a major source of revenue. Understanding their outcomes, (national) designs, and conditions is therefore essential for success.

A new quarterly series

To support this, Magnus Energy’s experts Ksenia Tolstrup and Carlos Úbeda – in collaboration with Balancing.Services – launch a Quarterly Balancing Market Watch, a new series providing transparent and consolidated insights into key developments across European balancing markets.

This initiative responds to a clear market need: a lack of open, cross-country reports offering regular, consolidated insights into balancing market dynamics. By monitoring and analysing these developments, we provide stakeholders – including TSOs, BRPs, and BSPs – with the tools to better understand seasonal outcomes and market conditions.

What’s in the Balancing Market Watch?

In each edition, we highlight the latest news and trends as well as analyse multiple market outcomes, including:

Main results from PICASSO and MARI platforms for the exchange of aFRR and mFRR balancing energy, including the status of TSO accessions
Price and volume evolutions for Frequency Containment Reserves (FCR) as well as for automatic and manual Frequency Restoration Reserves (aFRR and mFRR). For FRR, we analyse both balancing capacity and balancing energy market results.
The distribution between procured vs. activated volumes
Balancing costs per product

For the time being, we will be covering two regions, Central-Western Europe (incl. AT, BE, DE, FR, NL) and the Nordics (incl. SE and NO price zones, DK1, DK2, FI).

Key takeaways for Summer 2025

PICASSO’s aFRR energy exchanges surged by 50% since 2025, fueled by new accessions including the Baltics, Spain, Poland, and, most notably, France, while MARI’s exchanged volumes increased drastically in late 2024, boosted by Baltic and Iberian connections.
France’s entry into PICASSO on April 2 brought notable shifts: aFRR energy prices fell sharply with lower volatility, though capacity prices rose as market participants adjusted bids to offset reduced energy revenues. After the accession, France turned into a consistent net exporter of aFRR energy thanks to its competitive offers.
FCR prices remained anchored low in CWE, led by France’s cheap offers (median around 11 €/MW), thanks to its flexible nuclear fleet, while in the Nordics, Norway offered the region’s cheapest FCR-N and Sweden the highest, highlighting uneven pricing across zones.
Balancing philosophies of different TSOs are visible in the data: CWE is generally aFRR-oriented with low activation degrees overall, contrasting to the Nordics’ heavy reliance on mFRR.