RTE, TenneT, Amprion: how cross-border electricity flows work in Europe
Inside the European market coupling mechanism, interconnections and their impact on the price your data center actually pays.
One market, 27 borders
The EU runs on a single electricity market (Single Day-Ahead Coupling, SDAC) operated by national TSOs. Every day at 12:00 CET, more than 2,800 TWh are allocated in under 17 minutes.
The bottlenecks
France–Spain (2.8 GW), Germany–Poland (3 GW) or UK–Norway (1.4 GW) interconnectors are regularly saturated. Result: electricity at €20/MWh in Spain can cost €90/MWh in France at the very same hour.
Why buying local changes everything
A Spanish data center signing a PPA with an Andalusian solar park avoids congestion fees (up to €12/MWh) and line losses (2–5%). Local–national arbitrage often beats temporal arbitrage.
Voltarione's role
Our matching engine automatically excludes producers in saturated TSO zones and prioritises buyer–producer pairs within the same price zone.
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