Southeast Europe’s intraday electricity market is becoming increasingly important as growing wind and solar capacity, together with short-term system imbalances, increases the need for market participants to adjust their positions closer to physical delivery.
Serbia’s August trading data illustrates both the opportunity emerging in the intraday market and the limitations that still constrain its development.
Intraday trading volume on SEEPEX totalled only around 4,880 MWh during the month, representing a fraction of the more than 547,000 MWh traded on the day-ahead market.
Liquidity therefore remains shallow.
Yet the periods in which trading did take place reveal where the market is beginning to create value.
The average daily volume-weighted intraday price reached €178.21/MWh, significantly above the August day-ahead baseload average of €136.70/MWh.
Trading activity became increasingly concentrated during the evening hours, when tightening supply and falling solar generation pushed prices sharply higher.
Approximately 669 MWh changed hands for the 19:00–20:00 delivery period at an average weighted price of around €299.8/MWh.
The following hour recorded approximately 685 MWh traded at €291/MWh, while the 21:00–22:00 period saw around 681.5 MWh change hands at an average price of €262.7/MWh.
For generators and suppliers, these price levels create an increasingly significant cost for forecast errors.
A wind farm producing less than expected, a solar portfolio experiencing cloud-driven deviations or a supplier facing unexpected changes in demand may need to close its position shortly before delivery at prices materially higher than those available in the day-ahead market.
As a result, forecasting quality and access to intraday liquidity are becoming increasingly important components of renewable asset economics.
The market structure is now beginning to evolve around this growing operational requirement.
In late August, ADEX announced plans to establish a common intraday continuous trading environment covering Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia, based on a unified M7 trading setup.
Testing is scheduled ahead of expected implementation during autumn 2026.
The integration could help deepen regional liquidity by allowing market participants to correct positions using supply and demand across several interconnected power systems rather than relying primarily on local counterparties.
It could also support increasingly sophisticated approaches to portfolio optimisation.
A trading portfolio spanning Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia could gradually be managed across borders, allowing participants to optimise positions at a regional level rather than treating each national market as a separate trading book.
For major electricity traders, including GEN-I, Axpo, EFT, Statkraft, Alpiq and Danske Commodities, a deeper and more integrated intraday market could expand the range of trading and optimisation opportunities.
For renewable developers, however, it also raises the operational standard.
Forecasting, nomination management, automated trading and balancing strategies are becoming increasingly important to realised project revenue, particularly as a larger share of generation comes from weather-dependent sources.
The commercial gap between a well-managed renewable portfolio and an unmanaged merchant plant is therefore likely to widen as Southeast Europe’s power market becomes more volatile, more interconnected and increasingly dependent on the ability to respond to changing conditions in the hours immediately before physical delivery.
