Albania’s Day-Ahead Power Market Is Operational, but Still Not Mature Enough for CfD Support
Albania’s electricity market is making measurable progress, but it is not yet ready to serve as the reference price for modern renewable support mechanisms. That is the central conclusion of ERE’s first assessment of the ALPEX day-ahead market (DAM), which evaluates whether the market is sufficiently liquid and competitive to underpin the future conversion of renewable PPAs into contracts for difference (CfDs). Under Albania’s renewable energy law, ERE is required to carry out such periodic assessments, and it approved the market-readiness methodology in November 2025.
The report’s logic is straightforward: a day-ahead market can only act as a reliable CfD benchmark if it produces a frequent, stable, and credible price signal. To test that, ERE examined price availability, churn, bid-ask spreads, market depth, competition, and the effect of Albania’s coupling with Kosovo. It also benchmarked ALPEX against selected EU markets at the stage when those countries first introduced CfDs, choosing Poland, Hungary, and Croatia as comparators. This approach places Albania in a relevant policy context rather than comparing it with the most mature European exchanges.
The assessment does contain important signs of institutional progress. ALPEX generated a market-clearing price in every hour of the 12-month review period, from 1 November 2024 to 31 October 2025, which satisfies ERE’s criterion for continuous price availability over at least 10 months. The market also appears to be functioning as a shared Albanian-Kosovar trading platform, with coupled prices in more than 99% of hours. In policy terms, that is a meaningful achievement: the market is operational, regional, and capable of producing a continuous price signal.
Yet the core liquidity indicators show that ALPEX remains materially underdeveloped relative to the comparison markets. The churn factor is only 0.102, below HUPX, CROPEX, and TGE, indicating that the ratio of traded volume to total consumption is still weak. The bid-ask spread is also wide: the median is 9.7% of the average market-clearing price, the mean is 17.4%, and the 75th percentile reaches 19.2%. By contrast, the report shows that HUPX had a median spread of just 1.2% and a mean of 3.7%. These figures point to a market that can clear prices, but still struggles to do so efficiently and consistently.
Market depth provides the same message in a different form. ERE finds that in 25% of hours, ALPEX would not have been able to absorb more than about 146 MW of new zero-marginal-cost supply while still maintaining a positive clearing price. That is a critical limitation for a power system that is expected to integrate more renewable generation, especially as photovoltaic capacity continues to expand. In practical terms, the report suggests that the market may face stress at times of low demand or high renewable output, when additional capacity needs a deeper and more resilient trading environment.
Competition is stronger than the liquidity indicators alone might suggest. ERE reports 32 sellers and 33 buyers, with an HHI of 853 on the sell side and 1,220 on the buy side. It interprets this as a competitive sell-side structure and a moderately concentrated buy side. That is an important distinction: the market has participants, but participation has not yet translated into the degree of depth and turnover required for a robust reference price.
The broader policy conclusion is therefore cautious but clear. ALPEX is moving in the right direction, but it is not yet sufficiently liquid to support the transition to CfD-based renewable support. ERE explicitly concludes that the ALPEX DAM is not yet ready to be used as the reference price for support contracts in Albania. At the same time, the report treats this not as a failure, but as a transitional stage: the market has a continuous price signal, a reasonable participant base, and a functioning regional coupling, which are all necessary foundations for future readiness. ERE is expected to continue periodic assessments as the market deepens and matures.
In strategic terms, the report captures Albania’s power-market transition at an important midpoint. The system is no longer at the stage of market creation, but it has not yet reached the level of liquidity, depth, and price stability that would allow it to anchor modern renewable support instruments. For policymakers, the message is that market coupling and institutional setup are advancing faster than commercial liquidity. For investors, especially in renewables, the implication is equally clear: Albania’s market architecture is improving, but the price environment is still not mature enough to be treated as a fully reliable CfD benchmark.
