The services that balance the grid cost more than three times what they cost in 2023. This page explains where that increase comes from and what it means for an asset.
Portugal’s system services market went from around €550 million in 2023 to around €1,350 million in 2025. Over the same period, its weight relative to day-ahead market value rose from close to 13 % to around 40 %.
The cause is well understood and will not reverse: as renewable generation gains weight, the system needs more resources to balance the difference between what was scheduled and what happens. Those resources are contracted, and they have a price.
Source: REN.
There is a connection between these numbers that is not always obvious. The cost of an imbalance — the difference between what an asset declared it would do and what it actually did — has no price of its own: it depends on the cost of the resources the system had to mobilise to correct it.
They are the same resources. So when the price of flexibility rises, the cost of being wrong rises with it. A producer who has never offered reserve is nonetheless exposed to this market — on the expenditure side.
The practical conclusion is simple: the passive position is no longer neutral. Not participating is not staying out of it; it is being exposed with nothing in return.
For an industrial consumer, the rise shows up in the charges attached to each MWh consumed. It is a component that has grown faster than the price of energy itself and which, unlike energy, is rarely actively managed.
A load with some ability to shift in time, or with associated storage, can participate in the very markets that generate those charges — moving from payer to supplier of part of that service.
A market that triples in three years and is structurally tied to renewable penetration is not a risk to be mitigated — it is revenue available to whoever is qualified to capture it.
What separates an asset that captures that value from one that merely pays for it is qualification, control capability and market decision-making. None of the three requires investment in new equipment in most cases.
How we operate an asset →For an assessment, tell us the asset and the contractual arrangements in force.