Bidding Zone Review

Reporting on existing bidding zones and their review

​​​​What is it about?

ACER needs to assess the efficiency of current bidding zone configuration every three years. The assessment starts by requesting the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) to draft a technical report on the current bidding zone configuration, as well as a market report evaluating the impact of the current bidding zone configuration on market efficiency.

If one of the report reveals inefficiencies in the current bidding zone configuration, ACER can request the relevant Transmission System Operators (TSOs) to launch a review of an existing bidding zone configuration (Article 32 of the CACM Regulation).

• ENTSO-E’s report on the first review of the bidding zones review

• ENTSO-E’s latest technical report (2018)

• ENTSO-E’s latest market report (issued as a chapter of ACER’s market monitoring report in 2018)

Legal basis: Article 34 of the CACM Regulation

Responsibility: ACER

Current status: A pan-European bidding zone review process is currently ongoing, following the recast of the Electricity Regulation in the Clean Energy Package.

In November 2020, ACER adopted a decision on the methodology and assumptions that are to be used in the bidding zone review process and for the alternative bidding zone configurations to be considered.

Related documents:

• Annex I: Methodology and assumptions that are to be used in the bidding zone review process

• Annex Ia: List of minimum data to be published

• Annex Ib: Template to consolidate the results of the Bidding Zone Review

• Annex II: Technical specifications and timeline of the data request for LMP analysis

• Annex III: Evaluation of responses to the related public consultation

As TSOs were not able to reach an agreement on alternative configurations to be considered for this bidding zone review, ACER requested TSOs to undergo a locational marginal pricing (LMP) simulation and to submit the results to ACER to take and informed decision.