Day-Ahead Price · AT

What is the Austrian day-ahead market?

The Austrian day-ahead market covers the AT bidding zone, which has formed its own price zone since the split of the joint German-Austrian zone on 1 October 2018. Prices are determined in daily auctions: market participants submit buy and sell orders for delivery periods of the following day, and a uniform clearing price is calculated for each delivery period.

Two exchanges operate day-ahead auctions for Austria. The EPEX SPOT auction clears at noon within the European Single Day-Ahead Coupling (SDAC). In addition, the Vienna-based exchange EXAA operates an earlier morning auction with hourly and quarter-hourly products. Through SDAC, Austrian prices are directly influenced by supply, demand, and transmission capacity in the connected European bidding zones, above all Germany: since the zone split, a guaranteed minimum capacity of 4.9 GW at the German-Austrian border keeps the two markets closely linked and scarcity of that capacity lets prices diverge.

Official market data for the AT zone is published by the Austrian transmission system operator Austrian Power Grid (APG) on its market transparency platform and on the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform. The regulatory framework is overseen by the Austrian regulator E-Control.

Why AT day-ahead price forecasts matter for traders

Orders for the day-ahead auction are to be submitted before gate closure. Once the auction clears, positions are binding. Therefore, traders must form their expectations about prices and volumes beforehand, based on forecasts. With more accurate forecasts, traders can capture more value.

Accurate Austrian price forecasts matter for a wide range of market roles. Direct marketers of wind, solar, and hydro assets use them to decide how much volume to place in the auction versus later markets. Operators of batteries and pumped storage use them to schedule cycles across the largest spreads of the day. Utilities and industrial consumers use them to optimize procurement and flexible loads. Cross-border traders use them to position on the AT-DE spread, one of the most actively watched spreads in Central Europe.

The stakes of forecast errors have grown with the energy transition on both sides of the border. Rapid solar expansion in Austria and Germany produces steep midday ramps, negative prices, and large daily spreads, while hydro conditions add a distinctly Austrian layer of variability. In this environment, the difference between an average forecast and an accurate one translates directly into trading profit and loss.

How our forecast works

Telescope Energy operates a collaborative forecasting platform. Our proprietary ensemble engine combines state-of-the-art models developed by our research team with forecasts from the best independent expert forecasters. Each contributing model is continuously evaluated against realized Austrian market outcomes, and the ensemble weights individual signals by their recent performance. The result is a single forecast that systematically outperforms the individual models it is built from.

Forecasts for the AT day-ahead price can be updated until 11:55 local time, five minutes before the 12:00 SDAC gate closure, as new weather, load, and market information becomes available. Beyond the standard day-ahead horizon, extended forecasts covering up to seven days ahead are available. Forecasts are available through the Telescope API, with webhooks notifying your systems of new releases.

What drives Austrian day-ahead prices?

The tightest link is Germany. With 4.9 GW of guaranteed minimum border capacity, the German price is the anchor of the Austrian price: in most hours the two zones converge, and the interesting question is when and how far they decouple. High German renewable feed-in, diverging load situations and resulting cross-border capacity congestion are typical triggers.

Hydro gives the Austrian market its own character. Run-of-river generation follows precipitation and snowmelt, lifting supply in late spring and early summer and tightening it in dry or frozen periods. Alpine storage and pumped-storage plants add a large flexible capacity that arbitrages price spreads and dampens extremes. On top of this, wind generation in the east of the country and rapidly growing solar capacity increasingly shape the intraday price profile.

Beyond that, the usual fundamentals apply: electricity demand with its daily, weekly, and seasonal patterns, gas and EU ETS certificate prices that set the cost of the marginal plant, availability of conventional generation, and transmission capacity toward the neighbouring zones, i.e. Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Italy. A reliable forecast captures all of these drivers simultaneously and adapts as their relative importance shifts. This is precisely what the Telescope Energy ensemble of diverse, continuously benchmarked models is designed to do.

What is the most accurate forecast for Austrian day-ahead prices?

Accuracy claims are easy to make and hard to verify, which is why Telescope Energy is built around transparency. Historical forecasts and realized Austrian day-ahead prices are available free of charge via the Telescope API, so that every prospective customer can benchmark our AT day-ahead forecast against their current provider or internal models.

Our ensemble approach is designed for consistent accuracy across market regimes, including the situations where forecasts matter most: negative price hours, extreme spreads, hours where the AT and DE/LU prices decouple, and sudden shifts in renewable feed-in or hydro conditions. Because the ensemble reweights contributing models based on ongoing performance, the forecast keeps improving as the Austrian market evolves, without depending on any single model remaining state of the art.

Frequently asked questions

What does this forecast include?

The product provides quarter-hourly P10, P50, and P90 price forecasts in EUR/MWh for delivery from D+1 through D+7.

How often is this forecast updated?

Updates depend on new data and model submissions; there is no fixed update frequency. The submission cutoff is 11:55 local time on the day before delivery, five minutes before the 12:00 market gate.

How is this forecast delivered?

Forecasts are delivered through the Telescope API for integration into trading, nomination, analytics, and asset-optimization workflows. Webhooks notify you of new versions to retrieve via the API; periodically check the API to catch missed notifications. Simply request a pilot to evaluate the product with your own benchmark and use case.

What does this forecast cost?

Our day-ahead forecasts are priced competitively as subscriptions and we offer free backtesting and trials. See our pricing page for more information.