Spain's CNMC Backs One-Hour Delay to First Intraday Power Auction
Spain's regulator says shifting the first session from 15:00 to 16:00 CET is the simplest fix for cancellations disrupting the country's power balancing market.
Spain's CNMC told Montel on Friday (2026-09-18) that delaying the country's first intraday power auction by one hour, from 15:00 to 16:00 CET, would be a "simple and effective" solution to recurring session cancellations that have disrupted the domestic balancing market. The regulator said market participants share the view.4
That alignment between regulator and traders is relatively uncommon in power market design discussions, where commercial interests and system-operator priorities often diverge. The convergence suggests the timing problem is causing enough commercial damage to drive consensus, even if no formal implementation date has been set.4
The proposal's appeal is its narrowness. Moving the auction open back 60 minutes requires no new legislation, no redesign of clearing rules, and no bilateral coordination with foreign system operators. The CNMC did not say whether the timing shift alone would stop cancellations or merely reduce their frequency.4
Spain passed rules in August (2026-08-07) specifically to prevent intraday auction failures, Montel reported. The CNMC's continued push for a further fix in September (2026-09-18) suggests those August measures did not resolve the problem. The regulator offered no explanation of the root cause, only that the one-hour change would address cancellations.3,4
The pressure on intraday clearing reflects how rapidly Spain's generation mix has shifted. Spain, which has almost no domestic oil or gas, built out wind and solar capacity aggressively enough that those sources now account for more than 40% of total electricity supply. A Bank of Spain study found the 2024 wholesale electricity price was 40% below what it would have been under the country's 2019 energy mix. That growth raises the stakes for intraday clearing: variable generation creates volume and price swings across the trading day that day-ahead positions alone cannot fully hedge.2
Nuclear generation provides some insulation. At 19% of total output in 2024, it delivers stable baseload that requires no intraday position adjustment and does not add to the clearing burden on volatile days. The residual balancing obligation falls on hydro, gas, and battery storage, all of which depend on live auction sessions to price and schedule dispatch. Cancelled auctions do not remove that balancing requirement; they shift it into real-time mechanisms that are typically less transparent and more costly.2
Spain's limited physical connections to continental Europe narrow its options when domestic clearing fails. Sanchez said on Tuesday (2026-05-19) that Spain could not wait another decade for decisions on new Pyrenees power links and urged Brussels and Paris to accelerate projects, Montel reported. Without those new interconnectors, domestic participants have limited cross-border recourse when intraday sessions cancel.1
The CNMC framed the fix as "simple and effective" and gave no formal timeline. Its effectiveness depends on the root cause of the cancellations, which the regulator did not publicly identify. If sessions fail for reasons unrelated to the auction's start time, a one-hour shift may reduce friction without curing the underlying problem.4
No implementation date has been set. As of Friday (2026-09-18), the first intraday session still opens at 15:00 under the same schedule that has been producing the cancellations the August rules did not prevent. The endorsement from CNMC and market participants is the clearest signal yet that the change is coming; the timing of formal adoption remains unconfirmed.4,3