NBM Roadmap update: Go-live of mFRR energy activation market aimed by Q1 2025

NBM Roadmap update: Go-live of mFRR energy activation market aimed by Q1 2025

The NBM program has made good progress in spring 2023. The national Danish capacity market for mFRR has gone live, and several milestones in the project for automated balancing (mFRR EAM) have been reached.

Automatic mFRR energy activation market before transition to 15-minute day-ahead market

As communicated earlier, the Nordic TSOs face the risk of a delayed implementation of automated mFRR EAM (manual frequency restoration reserves energy activation market). The delay, if not mitigated, would impact the accession to the European platforms MARI and PICASSO from what we have planned until now, and could also postpone the transition to the 15-minute market time unit in the day-ahead market in Q1 2025.

Automatic mFRR energy activation confirmed as the viable approach

The NBM Program has investigated possible mitigating measures to reduce the delay. Based on this, the TSOs have now agreed to intensify the implementation of a minimum viable solution for automatic mFRR energy activation market (mFRR EAM) in the Nordics. This means developing a plan for maximizing the development pace and continuing to reduce scope. The clear aim is to implement automatic mFRR EAM by Q1 2025, enabling the go-live of the 15-minute day-ahead market according to plan. The introduction of the 15-minute intraday market will consequently be coordinated with the transition to the 15-minute day-ahead market planned for Q1 2025.

Accession to MARI and PICASSO

Despite the efforts made to reduce the scope and increase the speed of delivery, it is unfortunately clear, that reaching the set accession deadline for MARI (the European platform for mFRR exchange) will not be feasible until after the 15-minute go-live in Q1 2025.

This will then push the Nordic accession beyond the legal accession deadline in Q2 2024, but the Nordic TSOs are confident that measures to reduce the delay of the MARI accession will be found as we move forward.

With regards to PICASSO (the European platform for aFRR exchange), stepwise accession is seen as possible for Finland and Denmark in Q2 2024.

Stakeholder webinar in September

The NBM Program will continue to finalise the details of and confirm the plans in August, including assessing necessary contingency in terms of transition to 15-minute day-ahead market. We expect to present the results at a stakeholder webinar around mid-September.

Contact at TSOs:

Svenska kraftnät: Malin Wester, 
Energinet: Kristine Bock, 
Fingrid: Karri Mäkelä, 
Statnett: Ida Eriksson,