The Day-ahead (DA) market is the foundation of Germany’s power system, where next-day electricity prices are set through a single auction that balances generation and consumption.
For batteries, it’s the core merchant market.
By shifting energy from low-price hours to high-price peaks, BESS capture the deepest structural spreads in the power system. These spreads define energy arbitrage revenues and guide state-of-charge (SoC) plans for intraday and ancillary services.
In October 2025, the DA market moved from hourly to quarter-hourly settlement, sharpening price signals and rewarding fast-acting flexibility.
Subscribers will learn:
- How DA prices form and why volatility persists.
- The fundamentals driving the deepest DA power spreads in Europe’s major markets.
- How batteries position to capture value in the DA market.
How does the Day-ahead market work?
The German DA market clears next-day prices in 96 fifteen-minute blocks in a single auction at 12:00 CET.
Bids are aggregated into supply and demand curves:
- Sell orders are sorted from lowest to highest price (cheapest generators first).
- are sorted from highest to lowest price (most willing consumers first).
