Key facts: France
- Support scheme
- Complément de rémunération (market premium) via aggregator for plants > 500 kW; CRE tenders
- Balancing responsibility
- Responsable d'équilibre contract with RTE
- Transmission system operator
- RTE
- Exchanges
- EPEX SPOT France day-ahead and intraday · EPEX capacity auctions
- Settlement interval
- 15 min
- Currency
- EUR
- Bidding zones
- FR (single zone)
The French power market for renewables
France is a nuclear-heavy system where solar and wind add volatility at the edges: sunny spring weekends bring negative prices, cold winter evenings bring scarcity. Renewable capacity is growing quickly under CRE tenders, and almost all of it is sold through aggregators rather than regulated tariffs.
The market is fully coupled with its neighbours, so French prices move with Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Switzerland and intraday liquidity is deep.
Complément de rémunération, capacity market and balancing responsibility
Plants above 500 kW are supported with a complément de rémunération: they sell on the market and receive a premium that bridges the gap to their tender price, with no premium in negative-price hours. Selling requires an aggregator and a responsable d'équilibre, the party that settles imbalances with RTE.
France also runs a capacity mechanism in which generators obtain certificates sold to suppliers, and a demand-response scheme, NEBEF, that lets flexible assets sell load reductions directly into the wholesale market.
EPEX SPOT France, the RTE balancing mechanism and imbalance pricing
Day-ahead trading goes through the EPEX SPOT France auction, followed by intraday auctions and continuous trading. RTE's mécanisme d'ajustement lets qualified units offer upward and downward flexibility close to real time, with aFRR and mFRR procured through tenders.
Imbalances are priced against the balancing-mechanism cost, which can penalise poorly forecast solar and wind portfolios heavily on windy or sunny days.
What SAMAWATT offers in France
SAMAWATT acts as aggregator for solar, wind and battery portfolios in France: forecasting, day-ahead and intraday trading on EPEX SPOT, imbalance management under the responsable d'équilibre contract and valuation of capacity certificates.
For batteries we stack spot arbitrage with the balancing mechanism and reserve products, and we take care of the data exchange with RTE and the reporting the complément de rémunération requires.
- EPEX Day-Ahead (DAM)
- EPEX Intraday (IDM)
- RTE balancing mechanism
- NEBEF demand response
- J-1 programme
- Mécanisme d'ajustement
- Imbalance management