WHAT ARE THEY?
Buy Now is an innovative and unique Dutch-style auction, enabling participants to instantly secure capacity. Buy Now auctions are aligned with BritNed’s Intraday auctions and provide participants with unique advantages including trading closer to the delivery period.
The redesigned auction environment in Buy Now 2.0 simplifies and streamlines the trading workflow, delivering greater efficiency and flexibility. Developed by BritNed, and enabled by Empire, Buy Now auctions are a first-of-their-kind, and are available exclusively from BritNed.
Buy Now 2.0 (released in April 2025) enables participants to purchase any capacity amount (up to the offered capacity), view all MTU offers in one screen and purchase multiple MTUs simultaneously.
Buy Now enables participants to acquire capacity before, during, and after the regular Intraday auctions, providing participants with additional flexibility and certainty of securing capacity. Capacity can be secured 30 minutes before the Intraday auction and up to just two minutes before the nomination gate closure.
HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT?
Buy Now is the first interconnector auction of its kind and provides participants much greater flexibility, convenience, and control by facilitating trades much closer to the delivery period than has ever been possible previously.
Once the Buy Now offer is published, the price will automatically begin to decrease from the starting price in equal price steps, every 15 seconds.
The first participant that selects the purchase button on the Empire interface, or issues the respective API call, will acquire the offered capacity at its current price. The longer the auction continues without the capacity being purchased, the further the price will decrease.
Buy Now auctions are offered for every hour of the day, in both directions, providing there is sufficient Available Transfer Capacity (ATC). Auctions are aligned with BritNed’s four Intraday allocation windows but begin prior to and continue after the respective Intraday auction.
WHEN ARE THEY?
Buy Now auctions will be offered for every hour of the day, in both directions, providing there is ATC available. The auctions will start to run for each of BritNed’s 4 Intraday allocation windows, prior to the respective Intraday auction.
The initial block will be for the first 8 hours of the day, the second and third blocks will each offer 4 hours, and the final 8 hours will be offered in the fourth block. The auctions will continue to run (if not purchased), until 2 minutes prior to the Nomination Gate closure of that hour.
FAQs
For further information, check out the Buy Now section on our Auction FAQs page
KEY BENEFITS
Participants receive immediate notification of the successful acquisition of Transmission Rights
Buy Now’s custom capacity request provide participants with greater ease and control in securing capacity, from very small amounts up to the full offered capacity for each MTU offer
Participants can acquire capacity up to 30 minutes before, during, and after the regular Intraday auctions, up to 2 minutes before the Nomination Gate closure
Buy Now auction provides exact clarity on cost of securing Transmission Rights
Existing BritNed customers can participate, but like any other auction, Buy Now does require sufficient credit limit
Participate in Buy Now auctions either on Empire, or via API
HOW DO I NOMINATE CAPACITY?
Any Buy Now capacity that is acquired in an auction can be nominated on Empire. The allocated capacity from Buy Now offers are Intraday Transmission Rights, therefore these are subject to the same use It or Lose It principle as the Transmission Rights from the regular Intraday auction.
For an summary of the nomination gates, see our nominations overview.
