Day-Ahead Price · CH

What is the Swiss day-ahead market?

The Swiss day-ahead market covers the CH bidding zone, which corresponds to the single control area operated by Swissgrid as national transmission system operator. Prices are determined in a daily auction: market participants submit buy and sell orders for the delivery periods of the following day, and a uniform clearing price is calculated for each delivery period. The auction is operated by EPEX SPOT with gate closure at 11:00.

Switzerland is not part of the Single Day-Ahead Coupling (SDAC) that links the surrounding bidding zones. Cross-border capacity at the Swiss borders is allocated explicitly, separately from the energy trade, rather than implicitly through a common clearing algorithm. Swiss prices are therefore connected to neighboring markets through the nomination decisions of market participants: they tend to track surrounding zones when interconnection capacity is readily available and can diverge when it is constrained. Integration into the European internal electricity market is the subject of an ongoing process that would change this arrangement. Switzerland and the EU signed an electricity agreement on 2 March 2026, and the Swiss parliamentary process began the same month. If it is ratified and implemented, Switzerland will join EU market coupling, which would fundamentally change how Swiss prices form relative to the surrounding zones.

Auction granularity is moving to quarter hours. The introduction of a 15-minute market time unit for the Swiss day-ahead and intraday auctions is scheduled for 3 November 2026, with first delivery on 4 November. Our Swiss day-ahead product currently provides hourly forecasts and will switch accordingly to 15 minutes as the market is switching.

Official data on the Swiss control area is published by Swissgrid on its grid data pages and on the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform. Generation, consumption, and price series are additionally compiled by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy in the Energy Dashboard and the national electricity statistics.

Why CH day-ahead price forecasts are important

The day-ahead auction is a one-shot game. Orders must be submitted before gate closure, and once the auction clears, positions are binding. What makes the Swiss case distinctive is the role of stored water: for storage hydropower operators, the marginal decision is whether to generate now or preserve water for a more valuable delivery period.

Operators of storage and pumped storage hydropower use price forecasts to schedule dispatch and pumping across the highest spreads available, not only within a delivery day but across days and weeks. Battery operators use them to allocate cycles between the day-ahead auction, the intraday market, and the control energy markets. Balance group managers and suppliers use them to procure the right volumes and limit exposure to imbalance settlement. Importers and exporters use day-ahead prices to value cross-border capacity, since capacity acquired explicitly is only worth what the price spread turns out to be.

Because the Swiss zone clears separately from the coupled markets around it, a German or French price forecast cannot fully capture Swiss conditions. Swiss price formation reflects local hydrology, plant availability, and the state of the borders, and can diverge from neighboring zones precisely in the periods where accuracy is worth the most. Telescope Energy provides day-ahead price forecasts for the Swiss market with probabilistic outputs for these conditions.

How our forecast works

Telescope Energy operates a collaborative forecasting platform. Our proprietary ensemble engine combines models developed by our research team with forecasts from independent expert forecasters. Each contributing model is continuously evaluated against realized market outcomes, and the ensemble weights individual signals by their recent performance. The combined signal is designed to use complementary model strengths and reduce dependence on any single model.

Forecasts for the Swiss day-ahead price can be updated until 10:55 local time, five minutes before the 11:00 gate closure, as new weather, hydrological, load, and market information becomes available. Beyond the standard day-ahead horizon, the product covers delivery through D+7. This extended horizon is particularly useful in a hydro-dominated system, where reservoir dispatch decisions span multiple delivery days. Forecasts are available through the Telescope API, with webhooks notifying your systems of new releases.

What drives Swiss day-ahead prices?

Hydropower sets the tone. Storage and pumped-storage plants respond to prices, bidding according to water’s opportunity cost: whether generating now is more valuable than preserving water for a scarcer hour later. This value shifts with reservoir levels, precipitation and snowmelt, and the hydrological season, making prices responsive to conditions over weeks as well as hours. Run-of-river generation adds substantial weather-dependent supply tied to river discharge.

Solar shapes intraday prices: photovoltaic output compresses midday prices, contributes to morning and evening ramps, and can push prices negative on sunny, low-demand days. Demand varies daily, weekly, and seasonally with temperature, industrial activity, holidays, and behind-the-meter solar. Nuclear generation is a large, usually stable supply source, so an outage at one of a few units can remove a significant block at once.

Cross-border conditions complete the picture. Switzerland relies on winter imports, so neighboring prices, available transmission capacity, and resulting import and export positions affect its clearing price. Security-of-supply measures such as the winter reserve also matter in tight conditions. Meanwhile, solar and battery capacity expand, electrification leads to increasing consumption, and the market design evolves.

Reliable forecasts must capture hydrological, weather, and cross-border drivers together and adapt as their importance changes. Telescope’s continuously benchmarked ensemble models are designed to do exactly this.

Forecast accuracy

Accuracy claims are easy to make and hard to verify, which is why Telescope Energy is built around transparency. Historical forecasts and realized Swiss day-ahead prices are available free of charge via the Telescope API, so that every prospective customer can benchmark our Swiss 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: midday hours compressed by solar feed-in, periods in which the Swiss price decouples from surrounding zones, tight winter conditions with high import requirements, and the extreme spreads that make hydro and battery flexibility valuable. Ongoing performance evaluation allows the ensemble to adapt as the Swiss market evolves, without depending on any single model remaining state of the art.

Frequently asked questions

What does this forecast include?

The product provides hourly P10, P50, and P90 price forecasts in EUR/MWh for delivery from D+1 through D+7. Delivery days follow the Europe/Zurich time zone, including daylight-saving transitions.

How often is this forecast updated?

Updates depend on new data and model submissions; there is no fixed update frequency. The submission cutoff is 10:55 local time on the day before delivery, five minutes before the 11:00 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 always offer free backtesting and trials. See our pricing page for more information.