Imbalance price
The imbalance price is what a Balance Responsible Party pays or receives for any deviation between its scheduled and actual electricity position in each settlement period. Under Article 55 of the Electricity Balancing Guideline (Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2195), Estonia and the rest of the EU apply single imbalance pricing — one price per direction per 15-minute settlement period, derived from the marginal balancing-energy bids activated through MARI and PICASSO.
The imbalance price is what a Balance Responsible Party pays or receives for any deviation between its scheduled and actual electricity position in each settlement period. It is set per imbalance price area per settlement period under Article 55 of the Electricity Balancing Guideline (Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2195).
Single pricing
EBGL Article 55 prescribes single imbalance pricing as the EU default: one price per direction per settlement period, applied symmetrically. This replaces the older "dual pricing" model in which surplus and shortage settled at different prices. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all operate single pricing, harmonised with the rest of the EU.
How the price is derived
The imbalance price reflects the cost of the activated balancing energy that closed the system imbalance for that period. In upward-imbalance periods (system short of energy) the price anchors to the marginal mFRR or aFRR bid activated through MARI / PICASSO; downward-imbalance periods anchor to the marginal downward bid. There is no fixed ex-ante price — the imbalance price is the market outcome.
Estonian context
Elering and the Baltic TSOs publish the imbalance price on the Baltic Transparency Dashboard once each 15-minute settlement period closes. Since Estonia joined MARI on 9 October 2024 and PICASSO on 9 April 2025, Baltic prices have repeatedly hit ±10 000 €/MWh — the platform price cap — driven mostly by mFRR scarcity events.
Sources
EBGL Article 55 · Elering: Balancing service fees · Baltic Transparency Dashboard