News,  Market insights

REMIT Article 15 and the algorithmic-trading notification

Author

Volton Editorial Team

Date Published

REMIT (Regulation (EU) 1227/2011) is the EU framework that prohibits market abuse on wholesale energy markets. Its 2024 amendment (REMIT II, Regulation 2024/1106) extended the regime to cover algorithmic trading — every firm dispatching electricity by algorithm on European markets, including aggregators bidding batteries every fifteen minutes, must notify their national regulator and ACER.

In 2011, the EU passed REMIT, the Regulation on Energy Market Integrity and Transparency, to bring wholesale electricity and gas trading under formal market-abuse supervision. It set up ACER as the central watchdog. Every wholesale energy trade in the EU now gets reported to ACER. Insider trading, market manipulation, withholding capacity to push prices: all formally regulated, with national-regulator coordination behind the scenes.

In 2024 the regulation was substantially updated. Among the additions was Article 15, which for the first time brought algorithmic trading in energy markets into a formal notification regime. The text is short. Any market participant that engages in algorithmic trading on wholesale energy markets has to notify its national regulator and ACER, and it has to put in place specific organisational requirements: effective systems and risk controls, resilience, prevention of erroneous orders, and protection against the algorithm contributing to disorderly markets.

What counts as algorithmic? Broadly, any trading where a computer determines order parameters with limited human intervention: what to bid, when to bid, at what price, in what volume. That covers automated bidding agents on day-ahead and intraday, battery dispatch algorithms acting on price signals, aggregator software that turns thousands of small assets into a single market-facing schedule, and high-frequency intraday trading on continuous platforms. Practically every modern trading firm in European energy now runs at least some volume algorithmically.

Article 15 does not ban any of this. It documents it. The notification covers the trading strategies, the parameters and limits of the system, the testing methodology, and the controls. Once notified, the firm operates as a recognised algorithmic trader, with audit obligations to match.

For asset owners this is a quiet but real shift. When you ask a counterparty how your asset is being traded, under Article 15 they have to be able to answer. The risk controls described in their ACER notification are the same controls that apply when they bid your kilowatt-hours. The regulation is a transparency layer, not a brake.

Volton is notified to ACER as an algorithmic trader under Article 15. The trading systems that bid your battery into mFRR every fifteen minutes, that re-balance your portfolio in intraday when wind forecasts shift, that monitor every order before it leaves the building — all of it operates inside that regulatory frame.

Keep reading

Balance Service Provider — high-voltage transmission pylons at sunset
Market insights

What is a Balance Service Provider (BSP)?

A BSP is a market participant certified by the TSO to deliver balancing services — frequency reserves like FCR, aFRR and mFRR. Here is how the role works in Europe and Estonia, and where aggregators fit in.

1 min read
Nord Pool — wholesale power market trading screen with charts
Market insights

Inside Nord Pool

Nord Pool clears the day-ahead and intraday markets across the Nordics, Baltics, and much of Western Europe. We unpack the auction, market coupling, and what it takes to be a member.

1 min read
Balance Responsible Party — high voltage power line crossing a Norwegian mountain landscape
Market insights

Balance Responsible Party (BRP): who pays for every imbalanced kilowatt-hour

Every kilowatt-hour on the grid has a Balance Responsible Party that is contractually accountable for it. Here is how the BRP regime works under Elering and why aggregation matters.

1 min read
Day-ahead electricity market — trading screen with charts
Market insights

Day-ahead market: pricing an hour that has not happened yet

Every day at noon CET, an algorithm sets the price of electricity for every hour of tomorrow. The day-ahead auction is the reference the rest of the energy industry hangs off.

1 min read
Intraday electricity market — server rack with blinking green LEDs
Market insights

Intraday market — after the auction, reality drifts

After the noon auction closes, intraday opens — a continuous order book that runs until close to delivery. It is where flexibility actually pays.

1 min read
Power futures — handshake on a long-dated electricity contract
Market insights

Power futures: how a wind farm gets its loan approved

Forward contracts on electricity, traded on Nasdaq Commodities and EEX, let buyers fix a price for delivery months or years ahead. Most settle financially against the day-ahead spot.

1 min read
Power Purchase Agreements — wind turbine against blue sky
Market insights

PPAs — how long-term contracts financed the renewable boom

Power Purchase Agreements are 5–15 year bilateral contracts between renewable generators and corporate offtakers. They probably did more for Europe’s energy transition than any subsidy.

1 min read
FCR — high-voltage transmission pylons at sunset
Market insights

FCR: what catches the grid when a reactor trips

Frequency Containment Reserve activates within 30 seconds of a frequency deviation, fully automatic, no TSO signal. Batteries dominate it. It is what made grid-scale storage economically viable.

1 min read
aFRR — server racks and grid control systems
Market insights

aFRR, the reserve in the middle

Automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve activates in ~30 seconds via TSO control signal, follows it on a 4-second cycle, and pulls the grid back to 50 Hz. PICASSO is quietly transforming the market.

1 min read
mFRR — wind turbine farm landscape
Market insights

mFRR — where Estonian battery profits come from

Manual Frequency Restoration Reserve is activated by a human operator, with full delivery in 12.5 minutes. In Estonia, it is currently the most lucrative balancing market for batteries.

1 min read