EPEX SPOT M7 is the continuous intraday trading system used by EPEX SPOT, the European power exchange, to match electricity orders in real time right up to delivery. It is the technical platform power trading desks connect to when they buy and sell electricity within the delivery day, as opposed to the day-ahead auction. Firms reach M7 over an authenticated session, maintain a live order book by consuming a stream of incremental updates (deltas), and submit, modify, or cancel orders continuously while the market moves. Because intraday electricity runs 24/7 and settles down to quarter-hour blocks, M7 is a high-throughput, low-latency system: getting the connection, session state, and order-book consistency right is a hard engineering problem in its own right, separate from any trading strategy that sits on top of it.
How does EPEX SPOT M7 work?
M7 works by holding a live session between the trading firm and the exchange, over which the exchange streams every change to the order book as an incremental update rather than resending the full book each time. The firm authenticates with a client certificate, opens the session, and then keeps its local view of the market consistent by applying each delta in sequence. Orders can be entered, amended, or cancelled at any moment while trading is open. If a firm misses a sequence number or the session drops, its local order book is no longer trustworthy and must be resynchronised from the exchange before trading safely resumes. This continuous, stateful, sequence-sensitive design is what makes M7 fast, and also what makes a naive integration fragile. How Voltnir handles exactly this failure mode (drop, resync, never serve a torn book) is covered in the connectivity section of the features page.
What is the difference between EPEX SPOT M7 v6 and v7?
M7 v6 and v7 are not successive versions of one protocol; they are two parallel API surfaces of the same M7 platform, and a complete integration uses both. v6 is the AMQP API, over which orders and session commands are sent as XML messages and private feeds are received; it is the order-entry side of M7. v7 is the WebSocket API, over which the live order book is streamed as protobuf snapshots and incremental deltas, alongside a private stream of order and execution reports, secured with mutual TLS; it is the real-time market-data side. So a desk sends and manages orders over v6 and consumes live market data over v7, which is why Voltnir speaks both and presents them to your desk as one consistent order book and order-management surface.
What are quarter-hour products on EPEX SPOT intraday?
Quarter-hour products are 15-minute electricity delivery contracts, and since October 2025 each day is split into 96 of them across the coupled European intraday markets. They exist because generation and demand, especially from batteries and renewables, vary meaningfully within a single hour, so a finer delivery granularity lets desks trade closer to the real shape of the grid. For a trading system, more products per day means more contracts open at once and more order-book activity to process, which raises the throughput and latency bar on any middleware sitting between a desk and the exchange.
How much of EPEX SPOT intraday trading is automated?
Most EPEX SPOT intraday trading now runs through machines rather than manual entry. Roughly 84% of trades are submitted via API rather than the exchange's manual front end (EPEX SPOT, 2023), and by industry estimates around half of European intraday continuous volume is executed by algorithms. The practical consequence is that a desk trading intraday by hand competes against automated participants reacting in microseconds, which is why low-latency infrastructure and reliable order-book state have become table stakes rather than a nice-to-have.
How do trading firms connect to EPEX SPOT M7?
Firms connect to EPEX SPOT M7 either by building directly against the exchange protocol themselves or by using middleware that sits between their stack and the exchange. Building directly means implementing the session handling, delta sequencing, order-book consistency, reconnect logic, and failover to the exchange's backup servers, all of which run live while positions are open. Middleware handles that protocol layer and exposes a simpler, stable interface (for example REST, WebSocket, or gRPC) so the desk builds against the market rather than the plumbing. Voltnir is one such layer: a self-hosted gateway that manages the M7 session and presents a consistent live order book, order management, and position tracking over three protocols, so a desk can start trading without first spending months on connectivity.
Frequently asked questions
Is EPEX SPOT M7 the same as the day-ahead market?
No. M7 is the continuous intraday system, where electricity trades in real time within the delivery day. The day-ahead market is a separate, once-daily auction that clears prices for the following day. M7 handles what trades after that auction, as conditions change closer to delivery.
What is XBID / SIDC?
XBID, now part of the Single Intraday Coupling (SIDC), is the mechanism that couples national intraday order books across European borders, so an order in one country can match against liquidity in another. M7 is the trading system through which participants access this coupled intraday market.
What protocol does EPEX SPOT M7 use?
M7 uses a stateful session in which the exchange streams incremental order-book updates to each participant, authenticated with a client certificate over a secured connection. Participants must apply these updates in sequence to keep an accurate local book.
What is the difference between EPEX SPOT M7 v6 and v7?
They are two parallel API surfaces of the same M7 platform, not successive versions. v6 is the AMQP API used to send and manage orders as XML and receive private feeds; v7 is the WebSocket API that streams the live order book and execution reports as protobuf over mutual TLS. A full integration uses both.
Do I need my own EPEX SPOT membership to trade M7?
Yes. Trading M7 requires an EPEX SPOT membership; middleware such as Voltnir sits on top of that membership rather than replacing it. An EPEX SPOT simulation licence, the ASIM licence, lets firms test against the exchange SIM environment before trading live.