Balancing Market Watch

In Europe, balancing markets have been essential for securing and activating 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, these represent a major source of revenue making understanding of their outcomes as well as (national) designs and conditions underpinning them crucial for success. The Balancing Market Watch offers 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?

You will find the latest news, trends, and analysis of 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 Autumn 2025

• The effects of the European balancing platform integration is becoming clearly visible in the data. In PICASSO, the late-2024/early-2025 accession waves go hand in hand with much higher and more diversified cross-border aFRR exchanges. On top, it’s accompanied by a clear drop in concentration: Germany’s share falls from about 70% in January 2023 to around 20% currently. In MARI, cross-border mFRR exchanges are still largely dominated by Iberia and the Baltics even as additional go-lives add liquidity.
• In the Nordics, price patterns change noticeably after the mFRR EAM go-live on 4 March 2025. With 15-minute, ACE-based, marginal-price activation, outcomes become more sensitive to local merit-order depth whereas volatility tangibly increased: the standard deviation rises from 67 to 143 €/MWh for Up and from 41 to 141 €/MWh for Down. Countermeasures and algorithm updates that followed in summer helped to dampen volatility.
• These dynamics feed directly imbalance pricing. In Sweden, for instance, more dominant-direction periods mean imbalance prices are set by marginal mFRR more often, pushing the average up by 28.5% and raising volatility, with standard deviation increasing almost threefold. The strongest divergences appear when SE3–SE4 have to resolve imbalances locally under constrained cross-border capacity.
• Across products, balancing capacity markets remain relatively calm compared to energy. FCR(-N) is broadly stable, but a short Netherlands scarcity episode (27–29 October) reaches a peak around 8,345 €/MW/h. For aFRR, procurement is steady while energy activation prices differ widely by country. For mFRR, the extremes are driven by tail events, with peaks up to around 9,700 €/MWh.

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