In accordance with Commission Regulation (EU) No 2019/943 of June 5th 2019 on the internal market for electricity, RTE must contract its automatic frequency restoration reserve requirement one day before the provision of the balancing capacity with a contracting period of no longer than one day. This was the case in November 2021, but after 3 weeks operating, the French Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), noting a market failure, suspended this contractualization and reverted to the previous system. In its deliberation 2024-18 of January 25, 2024, the CRE decided to reopen the call for tenders and entrusted RTE with the task of notifying the exact date. The first gate closure of this day-ahead tender will be held on June 18th 2024 for the June 19th 2024 (first delivery day). 

Contracting of automatic frequency restoration reserve type products through a day-ahead call for tenders takes place after the contracting of frequency containment reserve products (FCR) and before the contracting of manual frequency restoration and replacement reserves products and the closing time of the auction of the day-ahead markets, set at 12pm.
From June 18th 2024, the day-ahead gate closure for automatic frequency restoration reserve will therefore close every day at 9am on D-1 , for results to be published at 9:30am at the latest. The opening of the day-ahead gate for automatic frequency restoration reserve allowing submission of bids for a delivery day D will take place on D-8 at 9am.

Only reserve providers with qualified capacities can participate to the automatic frequency restoration reserve calls for tenders.
The procedures for the day-ahead call for tenders are described in Article 4.H.4 of the Frequency Ancillary Services terms and conditions. 
An IT guide is published on the webpage Providing frequency ancillary services. This guide explains the procedures for submitting bids and details the operation of the platform through which market participants submit their bids.

Permission to the RACOON application is required in order to be able to participate in the day-ahead call for tenders. A permission request with the list of expected users must first be sent to RTE and requires a PKI certificate for each of the required users. For users who do not yet have PKI, a creation request can be made upstream on the RTE Service Portal.

The results of the daily call for tenders will be published on the RTE Services Portal in accordance with the following terms:
•    Total volume selected and marginal price for each direction at 30-minute intervals
•    Downloadable history file on each year
The data will also be available by API (Balancing Capacity).

For any queries, please email your usual account manager or marketservices@rte-france.com. 

May 13, 2024