– BritNed has launched the Buy Now auction, a first-of-its-kind interconnector capacity auction for the UK-Netherlands link
– The auction, facilitated by the Empire platform, allows participants to secure intraday capacity before, during, and after regular auctions
– Buy Now auctions open 30 minutes ahead of standard intraday auctions and continue until five minutes before the nomination gate closure, offering flexibility and control for participants
BritNed has launched the Buy Now auction, the first of its kind interconnector capacity auction, connecting the UK and the Netherlands. Developed by BritNed and enabled by the Empire platform, this auction allows participants to secure a predetermined amount of intraday capacity, offering flexibility and certainty in capacity acquisition.
In the first seven days of operation, the Buy Now auction allocated 1,984MW of intraday capacity, primarily sold in 5MW offers with the lowest offer secured at €0.08MW. Nils Teipel, commercial operations & planning manager at BritNed, highlighted the flexibility and convenience that Buy Now offers participants, allowing for trades closer to the delivery period than previously possible on any UK interconnector.
The Buy Now auctions are available for every hour of the day, in both directions, as long as there is sufficient available transfer capacity. The auctions align with BritNed’s intraday allocation windows but start before and continue after the regular intraday auction, providing participants with opportunities to acquire transmission rights before, during, and after standard auctions.
The launch of Buy Now comes on the heels of BritNed’s release of Empire, a next-generation allocation and nomination platform that has allocated significant amounts of capacity and instructed flows equivalent to powering approximately 1.4 million households every hour. Teipel noted that Empire’s success has enabled BritNed to deliver innovations like Buy Now, improving capacity trading and productivity in the interconnector industry.