BritNed launches ‘first of its kind’ interconnector auction

BritNed – the High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) interconnector linking the United Kingdom and the Netherlands – has launched the Buy Now auction; a ‘first of its kind’ interconnector capacity auction that enables participants to secure a predetermined amount of intraday capacity.

Developed by BritNed, and enabled by the allocation and nomination platform Empire, according to BritNed in a release, the new auction is the first Dutch-style interconnector auction of its kind and enables participants to acquire capacity before, during and after regular intraday auctions.

This provides participants with additional flexibility and certainty of securing capacity.

According to BritNed in a release, in its first seven days of operation, Buy Now allocated 1,984MW of intraday capacity.

Capacity was primarily sold in 5MW offers, with the lowest offer secured at €0.08MW ($0.085MW).

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Nils Teipel, commercial operations & planning manager at BritNed commented: “Buy Now is the first auction of its kind and gives participants much greater flexibility, convenience and control by facilitating trades much closer to the delivery period than has ever been possible previously on any UK interconnector.

“When the Buy Now offer is published, the price will automatically begin to decrease from the starting price in equal price steps every 15 seconds. The first participant that selects the purchase button on the Empire interface, or issues the respective API call, will acquire the offered capacity at its current price. The longer the auction continues without the capacity being purchased, the further the price will decrease.”

Buy Now auctions are offered for every hour of the day, in both directions, providing there is sufficient available transfer capacity (ATC).

Auctions are aligned with BritNed’s intraday allocation windows but begin before and continue after the respective Intraday auction. Buy Now auctions open 30 minutes ahead of the standard intraday auctions and continue to run – if the capacity is not purchased – until just five minutes before the nomination gate closure of that hour.

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Added Teipel: “Participants can acquire transmission rights before the regular intraday auction, therefore, capacity can be secured in advance, alongside acquiring transmission rights after the regular intraday auction and during the open nomination gate.”

The launch of Buy Now comes just six months after BritNed released Empire, what they call a next-generation allocation and nomination platform.

Empire replaced three legacy systems, providing an integrated approach to trading and enables users to manage their entire BritNed trading portfolio from one platform.

Since its launch on 19th September 2023, Empire has allocated 14,753GW of day ahead and intraday capacity, and 19,398GW of long term capacity. The total flow that was instructed by Empire during that period was 2,398GWh, which is equivalent to powering approximately 1.4 million households every single hour.

Commented Teipel on the success of Empire: “Empire was designed using a modular microservice approach with advanced technologies, ensuring it can be tailored to customer’s sophisticated workflows, whilst removing technical bottlenecks to enable BritNed to deliver new innovations to the market at pace – such as the innovative Buy Now auction.

“Buy Now is borne from that success and is the next step in BritNed’s mission to improve capacity trading while delivering unprecedented levels of performance and productivity in the interconnector industry.”