To make the balancing capacity market more flexible and facilitate market entry for new technologies, the TSOs are introducing shorter product time slots for aFRR and mFRR in addition to the existing 4-hour product time slots. For providers who do not wish to make use of the shorter product time slots, nothing will change, as 4-hour bids can still be submitted as before. A more detailed description can be found in the accompanying document, which contains all relevant information, including the changes to the procedures. This can be downloaded, along with the planned adjustments to the terms and conditions for balancing service providers (MfRRA), from the download box below.
The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) approved the amendment on October 28, 2025, under reference BK6-25-212. This sets a regulatory implementation deadline of October 28, 2026, at the latest. This date therefore marks the day from which 15-minute slots must be submitted and corresponds to the gate open time for the delivery date of November 4, 2026, with the gate closure time on November 3, 2026. The TSOs will keep the balancing service providers continuously informed about the planning and implementation status and will announce the exact date of go-live at least four weeks in advance via a publication on the TSOs’ joint website, regelleistung.net. The system will not go live before October 2026.
+++ UPDATE: 08.10.2026 +++
The introduction of the 15-minute products represents an important step toward the further development of the balancing capacity market—particularly with regard to the integration of photovoltaic systems. The TSOs continue to pursue the goal of making these products available to all market participants as soon as possible and with a high level of quality.
However, during the implementation process, extensive testing has shown that the underlying IT systems and processes do not yet have the necessary processing capacity to handle the number of bids expected in the future. Although improvements have already been made, further measures are necessary to ensure stable and resilient operational performance. The TSOs have therefore decided to postpone the introduction of 15-minute products until a stable and reliable execution of the allocation process can be guaranteed, even as the number of bids increases. The BNetzA has been informed accordingly.
The TSOs are expected to inform market participants in early November about the current status of the work and the next steps regarding the introduction of the 15-minute products.
As part of the project, the performance of the batch endpoints was optimized, resulting in significant improvements. This improvement is already available in the training environment and is expected to be available in the production environment by the end of August. As usual, we will provide further information regarding the exact date of the release.
To continue benefiting from these optimizations after the introduction of the additional 15-minute products, it is necessary to populate batch requests exclusively with bids of the same product type—that is, either 15-minute products or 4-hour products. You can continue to offer both 15-minute products and 4-hour products. These should then be submitted to the TSO in at least two separate batch requests. In addition, we recommend grouping similar types of operations (POST, PATCH, DELETE) within batch requests and submitting them separately.