How Europe represents and coordinates market seams

How is cross-border transmission capacity represented, and how are electricity exchanges coordinated when domestic auctions remain separate?

The final chapter of our series takes a closer look at how Europe coordinates cross-border electricity exchanges. It walks through two closely linked questions: how network constraints determine the capacity available for trade, and how that capacity is allocated through a shared auction or between auctions that remain separate.

It explains how transmission system operators translate forecast grid conditions into the constraints used by EUPHEMIA. Available Transfer Capability (ATC) sets limits border by border, while flow-based coupling captures how exchanges across several borders use the same network margins. Both approaches support the joint allocation of energy and cross-border capacity, but differ in how they represent the network and the trading opportunities it can accommodate.

The chapter also considers interfaces outside this common clearing process. It compares explicit transmission-right auctions with the proposed Multi-Region Loose Volume Coupling (MRLVC), which would select cross-border schedules using capacity and order-book information from both markets while leaving domestic bid selection and price formation separate.

Closing the four-part series, this chapter brings the mechanisms and their trade-offs into focus: what is coordinated, what remains local, and how these choices shape the use of available transmission capacity.