Trades on the Prague Energy Exchange rose sharply
The Prague Energy Exchange PXE experienced a record year thanks to its incorporation into the German EEX group. Last year, trades with 48.1 terawatt hours of electricity settled in Prague, which is half as much as in 2016.
This volume corresponds to about four-fifths of Czech consumption. Higher trades were brought by new traders who had previously traded on EEX, and thanks to the integration of Prague products into the EEX system, they have also been able to buy and sell electricity in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania since last year.
A total of 39 new market participants traded in the products of the Prague Stock Exchange. “These are nine new players in the Czech electricity futures market, two in the Slovak market, nineteen in the Hungarian market and nine in the Romanian market,” says PXE Secretary General David Kučera. At the same time, PXE never managed to gain more than fifty members.
The Little Revolution experienced the Hungarian Electricity Exchange. The volume of settled trades increased from 9.5 to more than 20 terawatt hours. Hungary thus surpassed the Czech electricity market for the first time. “In addition to the influx of new members, volumes in Hungary have skyrocketed thanks to a newly structured service that allows traders to settle over-the-counter trades through stock exchanges,” adds Kučera.
According to him, traders thus reduce the risk of not getting paid. In the last four months of last year alone, this type of trade accounted for about fifteen terawatt hours of electricity.
Last year, Kučera estimated that the merger with EEX would increase the volume of trades by about a third. It could also be cautious that it could also start trading in electricity. The arrival of new players raised transactions with Romanian contracts from zero to five terawatt hours.
“Now we would like to revive trading in Polish derivatives and we are considering other countries. Within the EEX Group, PXE is responsible for the markets to the east of the German border, and EEX colleagues are leaving the expansion in this direction at our discretion, ”says Kučera.
So far, Central European electricity stores are marginal for EEX. About one percent of the total volume traded in Leipzig.