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Energy market exchange APX has announced it has successfully transferred the clearing of its spot markets to the same clearing house used by its owner EPEX Spot.
The move took place at the end of March and marks the latest step in the integration of the two companies which began when they merged in April last year.
APX previously carried out clearing for its own markets in the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium. The process is now being executed by European Commodity Clearing, bringing its markets in line with those run by EPEX Spot in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
According to EPEX Spot, this coupling of markets should maximise social welfare, encourage investment in interconnectors and lead to the convergence of prices, and could mean a fall in wholesale energy prices in the UK as they are generally lower on the continent.
APX also released trading figures for March, showing volumes on its Power UK day-ahead market hit nearly 6.4TWh in March, an all-time monthly high for the exchange.
The number is almost double that of the same month last year, and around 0.8TWh higher than the figure for February.
The growth all came from the main auction which saw volumes increase to almost 6.2TWh, up from roughly 5.4TWh in previous month. Trading in the half-hour 15.30 auction fell slightly to just over 210GWh.
APX commercial director Derek Abernethy attributed rising volumes over the last year or so to it gaining ground on its larger rival N2EX. He told Utility Week: “You can clearly see that the volumes increase at our Power UK market is parallel to the decrease of N2EX volumes since the beginning of 2015.” He said the introduction of the half-hour auction in February had also helped to boost overall volumes.
At more than 1.25TWh, intraday trading on the APX’s Continuous UK market was up by around 50GWh on February but down by about 120GWh on March 2015.
Day-ahead volumes on EPEX Spot markets across Europe, including those run by APX, totalled just shy of 44TWh in March, up from 42.7TWh the month before. Trading on intraday markets increased by around 0.4TWh to more than 5.4TWh.
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