Day-Ahead Price · ES

What is the Spanish day-ahead market?

The Spanish day-ahead market covers the ES bidding zone and forms part of the Iberian electricity market, MIBEL, alongside Portugal. Prices are determined in a daily auction: 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. The auction is operated by OMIE.

Spain participates in the Single Day-Ahead Coupling (SDAC), which matches energy orders and allocates available cross-border capacity across connected European bidding zones. Spain and Portugal remain separate price zones: their prices converge when interconnection capacity is sufficient and can separate when it is constrained. The connection with France also links Spanish price formation to supply and demand in the wider European market.

The auction uses quarter-hourly delivery periods. Official Spanish and Portuguese clearing prices are published in OMIE's market results. Spain's transmission system operator, Red Eléctrica, publishes generation, demand, and system information through ESIOS and its electricity system reports.

Why ES 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. For Spanish market participants, the value of those positions depends heavily on how renewable production and demand line up across the delivery day.

Accurate price forecasts matter for a wide range of market roles. Solar and wind asset operators use them to assess expected revenues and decide how much volume to place in the auction versus later markets. Battery and pumped storage operators use them to schedule charging, pumping, and generation across the highest spreads. Industrial consumers and suppliers use them to optimize procurement and flexible load. Asset optimizers use them to allocate flexibility between day-ahead, intraday, and balancing markets.

Daily average prices alone cannot capture these decisions. Low midday prices during strong solar production can coincide with higher prices after sunset, while changes in wind and hydrological conditions can shift the price level across several days. Telescope Energy provides day-ahead price forecasts for the Spanish market with probabilistic outputs for these conditions.

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 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 Spanish day-ahead price can be updated until 11:55 local time, five minutes before the 12:00 gate closure, as new weather, load, and market information becomes available. Beyond the standard day-ahead horizon, the product covers delivery through D+7. Forecasts are available through the Telescope API, with webhooks notifying your systems of new releases.

What drives Spanish day-ahead prices?

Solar and wind are major drivers of Spanish day-ahead prices. Strong solar output can push midday prices toward or below zero, while evening ramps and changing wind conditions shift prices across the day. Negative prices occur, but they tend to be shallow rather than the deep negative prices seen in some other European markets. Forecasting both their frequency and depth helps solar marketers manage revenue risk and storage operators identify charging opportunities.

Hydropower, reservoir levels, nuclear availability, demand, and gas and carbon costs also shape prices. Since the April 2025 blackout, additional gas-fired units have often been scheduled after the auction for system stability, so gas has less influence on day-ahead prices than the final generation mix suggests. Cross-border capacity and storage further affect supply and price spreads. See Red Eléctrica's day-ahead market report for more information.

Our ensemble combines these changing renewable, weather, demand, and market signals to forecast prices across delivery periods.

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 Spanish day-ahead prices are available free of charge via the Telescope API, so that every prospective customer can benchmark our Spanish 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: low or negative prices during strong renewable production, evening ramps as solar output falls, changes in wind and hydrological conditions, and periods when cross-border capacity is constrained. Ongoing performance evaluation allows the ensemble to adapt as the Spanish 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. Delivery days follow the Europe/Madrid 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 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 always offer free backtesting and trials. See our pricing page for more information.