SDAC Market Watch

The Single Day-Ahead Market Coupling (SDAC) is the largest coupled electricity market area, and its price keeps providing the most robust price signal in Europe. Analysing SDAC is essential because day-ahead prices signal short-term supply-demand balance, inform trading and hedging decisions, and guide operational and investment choices across interconnected European power systems. ​

In quarterly updates, we monitor the latest outcomes and trends as well as analyse multiple indicators, including:​

• Day-ahead price developments across the entire SDAC area and the fundamentals driving them ​
• Price convergence levels across Capacity Calculation Regions​
• Occurrence of negative prices and reasons for year-on-year changes​
• Tendencies in net positions of individual bidding zones​
• The impacts of allocation and active constraints on price convergence. ​

As we navigate the complexities of the day-ahead market in autumn 2025, this Market Watch aims to provide stakeholders with valuable insights, enabling them to stay ahead in an ever-evolving electricity market and system environment.

Key insights of the SDAC Market Watch

The switch to the 15-minute market time unit (MTU) in SDAC went live on the 1st of October without a hitch, making this long-expected market update a success.

Average SDAC prices in autumn 2025 were fairly similar compared to those in autumn 2024, with clear exceptions noticeable in France and its neighbouring countries, and the south of Sweden and Norway. These changes also drove price convergence, which drastically increased in Nordic CCR, while in Core CCR the opposite occurred. The former is due to higher (but more homogeneous) prices in the southern zones of the CCR. The latter is due to opposite price shifts of specific bidding zones: Poland and Austria became considerably more expensive, while other bidding zones to the West became a lot cheaper (e.g. France, where the price drop from autumn 2024 is >20 €/MWh). The bidding zone border between France and Italy North is confirmed as the least convergent in Europe.​​

Severe storms in October caused spikes in the number of negative-price hours across Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain: over the course of two days during storm Amy, Germany alone experienced 37 hours of negative prices. ​

Polish allocation constraints were active during 25% of MTUs in autumn 2025 compared to 15% in autumn 2024. This was mainly driven by a much larger price spread between Germany and Poland – which was exacerbated by the presence of the constraint itself.​

In autumn 2025, 4 out of 5 of the most constraining critical network elements were internal elements rather than cross-zonal. Interestingly, most of these elements did not have a large impact in summer 2025.​

Deep-dive further into the SDAC Market Watch

As we navigate the complexities of the day-ahead market in Autumn 2025, this Market Watch aims to provide stakeholders with valuable insights, enabling them to stay ahead in an ever-evolving electricity market and system environment.​