With Nord Pool you can trade day-ahead in 15 countries, and across 21 bidding zones. More than 300 buyers and sellers place over 2000 orders every day, and on a yearly basis around 500 TWh is traded.

The day-ahead market has proven its efficiency, delivering a trusted market which sets bidding zone prices for each hour.

Nord Pool provides a wide range of order types for buyers and sellers to match the dynamics of the demand or supply they are offering. Typically, the result of the day-ahead market is used as the baseline for planning the next 24-hour period, with later changes or new opportunities realised in Nord Pool's intraday market.

The daily process

At 10:00 CET available capacities on interconnectors and in the grid are published - buyers and sellers have until 12:00 CET to submit their final bids to Nord Pool for the auction for delivery hours the next day.  

Submitted orders are matched with other orders in the pan-European market coupling process - the Single Day-Ahead Coupling (SDAC) - through a common algorithm called Euphemia. In the matching process, the single price for each hour and each bidding zone is set where the curves for sell price and buy price meet, taking into account network constraints.

Hourly clearing prices are typically announced to the market at 12:45 CET or later. Following the publication of the prices, the individual result are reported to each buyer and seller. The physical obligation to deliver/consume the purchased or sold energy follows as Nord Pool nominates the trades to the imbalance settlement process applicable in each country.