The Power Trading Process

Process walkthrough of the UK power trade lifecycle and supporting systems.

Quick takeaways:

Visualises the UK balancing mechanism and the scheduling lifecycle for power trades.
Explains how OTC, day-ahead, and intraday processes connect across the market stack.
Shows automation opportunities and supporting systems for trading, operations, and settlement.

Power trading combines commercial decision making with tightly controlled market operations. The diagrams below outline the market landscape, scheduling flows, and automation touch points typically encountered by utilities and energy traders.

Balancing the Market

UK balancing mechanism overview — The core balancing mechanism highlights how the system operator maintains supply and demand equilibrium across the grid.

Day-Ahead and Intra-Day Scheduling

Day-ahead and intra-day trade processing flow — Day-ahead and intra-day trade processing timelines coordinate nominations, confirmations, and position reconciliation.

OTC to Day-Ahead and Intra-Day integration — OTC trades feed downstream day-ahead and intra-day markets, ensuring consistent position management across venues.

Detailed Operations

Detailed trade processing steps — Detailed orchestration spans contract validation, scheduling, settlement, and exception handling.

Detailed trade processing with message flows — Message flows clarify the interfaces required between ETRM systems, market gateways, and system operators.

Automation Opportunities

Automated algorithmic trading architecture — Algorithmic automation helps traders respond to market signals rapidly while applying risk and compliance guardrails.