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. ​

Key insights of the SDAC Market Watch

Average SDAC prices are significantly lower in summer 2025 compared to summer 2023 and 2024. While some bidding zones have seen drastic decreases during this summer compared to the same period in 2024 (such as the Baltics and most of Eastern Europe), the average prices in other bidding zones have actually increased (e.g. Central-Western Europe (CWE)and the Southern regions of Nordic CCR).​

​Price convergence has been high in capacity calculation regions (CCR) characterised by mostly radial grids, such as SWE, SEE, Greece-Italy, but also in Core CCR with its large and fully meshed network. On the other hand, price convergence has been low in Hansa, Nordic (characterised by a large number of HVDC interconnectors) and Italy-North CCRs.​

While the total number of negative-price hours has decreased compared to summer 2024 (with Finland and Sweden achieving a ~46% drop), there was no lack of exceptions. Spain showed a 125% increase in the cumulative number of negative-price hours over the entire year so far, surpassing all other bidding zones besides SE2 for total negative hours, likely due to the exceptional rainfall that affected Spain during spring 2025. Over the summer months, however, the entire CWE is in the lead in terms of negative-price occurrences.​

​In Core CCR, a handful of network elements located at the heart of CWE limited SDAC fairly consistently, i.e. between 10-45% of hours, with shadow prices above 100 €/MW. The Polish net position allocation constraint limited SDAC less often in summer 2025 than during the same period in 2024 and 2023 (from ~22% of hours in 2023, to ~16% in 2024 and ~13.5% in 2025.​

Deep-dive further into the SDAC Market Watch

​As we navigate the complexities of the day-ahead market in summer 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.​