OPTIMATE project

The CMA took part in the European Optimate project that aimed at building a technical and regulatory analysis platform of the different ways of integrating all of the electricity markets in Europe into one single market.

The OPTIMATE project (An Open Platform to Test Integration in new MArkeT DEsigns of massive intermittent energy sources dispersed in several regional powers) has now ended. It aimed at building a technical and regulatory analysis platform of the different ways of integrating all of the electricity markets in Europe into one single market.

For the sum of €4.5 million financed in part by the umbrella Program 7 of the European Union, the project, technically coordinated by RTE, federated the works of several European electricity operators, university research laboratories and industrialists. It allowed the CMA to use its expertise in optimization since the simulation of a European coupled electricity market calls on different methods: "merit order”, linear programming in integers and non-linear optimization.

The CMA’s role was to build three modules belonging to the “day ahead” market: the electricity market that is sequenced in several phases is resolved in one day before its realization so that all its players, notably network managers (the project’s main partners, in particular technical leader RTE), can ensure its safety and quality. The three modules the Centre was responsible for – Reserve Requirement, Cross-Border Limit, Market Coupling – were delivered at the end of 2011.

The project entered its operational phase by RTE. The coupled market simulator is used to support the CMA’s different research activities around the issues of market coupling.

The industrialization of the platform is underway within RTE.