BBCM (Baltic Balancing Capacity Market)
BBCM is the joint day-ahead capacity-procurement platform run by the three Baltic TSOs (Elering, AST, Litgrid). It went live on 4 February 2025 with FCR and mFRR; aFRR was added on 15 April 2025 once Estonia joined PICASSO. Each morning it co-optimises FCR, aFRR and mFRR procurement for next-day delivery, against ~1 500 MW of total Baltic balancing-capacity demand. BBCM procures capacity; the energy is activated cross-border through MARI (mFRR) and PICASSO (aFRR).
BBCM (Baltic Balancing Capacity Market) is the joint day-ahead capacity-procurement platform operated by Elering (Estonia), AST (Latvia) and Litgrid (Lithuania). Each morning it runs a co-optimised auction across all three reserve products — FCR, aFRR and mFRR — for delivery the next day. BBCM went live on 4 February 2025, days ahead of the Baltic synchronisation with Continental Europe.
Capacity, not energy
BBCM is procurement, not activation. It buys the right to call on a reserve, paid as a daily availability fee. The actual energy delivered when reserves are activated is settled separately through the cross-border energy platforms: MARI for mFRR energy, PICASSO for aFRR energy. A BSP typically earns BBCM capacity revenue every day it is available plus an additional energy revenue on the days it is actually activated.
Launch and aFRR addition
The first BBCM auction on 4 February 2025 procured 1 257 MW of balancing capacity for next-day delivery — including 29 MW of FCR and 730 MW of upward mFRR. aFRR capacity was deliberately excluded at launch because Estonia's connection to PICASSO had been delayed beyond the synchronisation deadline; aFRR procurement was added on 15 April 2025 (first aFRR-capacity delivery day 16 April), six days after Elering joined PICASSO. Total Baltic balancing-capacity demand for 2025 sits around 1 500 MW.
How a BSP participates
Bids are submitted to the platform every morning before the day-ahead gate closes. Minimum bid size is 1 MW per product per direction; bids below that are aggregated through an aggregator before submission. Co-optimisation means a single 1 MW bid can be allocated to whichever product (FCR / aFRR / mFRR) clears most efficiently across the three Baltic zones, so a BSP need not pre-decide which product to offer. Prequalification on each product is the precondition for participation.
Sources
Elering: Energy and capacity market for balancing services · BBCM Evaluation Report 2025 · BBCM Procurement Optimisation Function (Jan 2025)