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Poland · what a megawatt is paid

One megawatt in PSE’s aFRR up reserve would have been paid about €411,000 over the last twelve months

PSE, the Polish transmission system operator, buys most of its balancing capacity the day before, hour by hour, in seven products: frequency containment (FCR), automatic and manual frequency restoration (aFRR and mFRR), each up and down, and replacement reserve (RR) up. Every megawatt it accepts is paid the hour’s clearing price. PSE publishes every price and every volume since the reformed market opened on 14 June 2024. This page sums them.

aFRR up paid the most of the seven

What one megawatt accepted in every hour of PSE’s day-ahead procurement would have been paid, from November 2025 to October 2026. A megawatt can be sold into one product at a time, so these are alternatives, not a sum.

FCR up€219k (zł939k)FCR down€179k (zł764k)aFRR up€411k (zł1.76m)aFRR down€325k (zł1.39m)mFRR up€350k (zł1.50m)mFRR down€114k (zł489k)RR up€203k (zł866k)

PSE S.A., cena mocy bilansującej in the basic procurement (report cmbp-tp), złoty per MW per hour for each hour, read through PSE’s market data interface; each hour’s price converted at the ECB euro reference rate for the złoty of that day. Not a forecast: what the published prices paid.

A month of aFRR up paid as little as €18,000, in February 2026, and as much as €53,000, in October 2026

020406080€ thousandJun 2024€33kAugOctDecFebAprJunAugOctDecFeb€18kAprJunAugOct€53k

The same sum, one bar a month, in thousands of euros. The current month is left out until it is complete.

The whole market is a few hundred megawatts a product

Over the same twelve months PSE bought, on average each hour: FCR up 193 MW; FCR down 193 MW; aFRR up 451 MW; aFRR down 410 MW; mFRR up 463 MW; mFRR down 114 MW; RR up 615 MW. The battery projects in the connection queue add up to tens of gigawatts, so very few of them can earn these prices.

PSE also buys small top-ups close to real time

During the day PSE tops its reserve up quarter hour by quarter hour, in its supplementary procurement, at prices of their own. The volumes are small: on average FCR up 28 MW; FCR down 24 MW; aFRR up 67 MW; aFRR down 41 MW; mFRR up 89 MW; mFRR down 41 MW. One megawatt sold there in every quarter hour PSE bought aFRR up would have been paid about €399,000 over the same twelve months.

PSE S.A., reports cmbu-tu (prices) and mbu-tu (volumes), every quarter hour. Until 20 October 2026 this page read only these top-ups and took them for the whole market. The figures above it are from the day-ahead procurement.

Every month, every product, in euros per megawatt
MonthFCR upFCR downaFRR upaFRR downmFRR upmFRR downRR up
June 202414,23112,01033,01329,21320,90022,65122,556
July 202424,45212,65543,93928,12527,54533,07722,956
August 202414,04815,82629,79627,41625,23617,40510,213
September 202415,91815,62030,34225,75523,46412,76613,936
October 202423,72110,90036,30425,41518,92410,99321,818
November 202425,65610,75538,07525,85717,70211,16826,748
December 202422,07110,90932,50720,48421,27512,38920,186
January 202517,68210,67928,01216,86115,9229,41118,613
February 202516,1115,88230,2019,51415,1106,51117,881
March 202513,53314,98427,29725,64229,14119,34814,117
April 202513,93017,39928,66929,27436,55825,44812,181
May 202515,07216,79528,57024,50932,27719,09210,553
June 202515,06625,02829,90033,76041,07625,97611,551
July 202515,40910,50226,68815,74925,94213,77413,410
August 202512,60614,84024,02120,93428,90417,75110,231
September 202515,39911,52626,99316,98026,85310,06714,232
October 202513,64011,51329,55422,05123,00412,66219,282
November 202518,2216,42129,07413,46319,0398,98124,045
December 202514,7137,74625,89621,33416,42310,37317,524
January 202624,6559,98133,41022,79025,15611,36725,476
February 202613,2976,61917,51310,19012,4543,53315,146
March 202614,45115,26332,55026,94634,654·12,173
April 202612,57133,66237,43262,42142,4889449,996
May 202614,15522,35332,25961,78232,84522,80511,135
June 202616,52215,85834,91319,52237,0037,84812,720
July 202616,51117,03930,82221,42431,99210,11716,582
August 202620,71715,60234,86319,51333,49914,61715,455
September 202623,26317,58448,72629,57933,38616,27315,815
October 202630,27410,51053,26516,40930,5947,54526,470
November 2026 (so far)30,7323,85940,0755,08221,0831,03427,107

Sources: PSE S.A., reports cmbp-tp and mbp-tp (the day-ahead procurement, every hour) and cmbu-tu and mbu-tu (the top-ups, every quarter hour), api.raporty.pse.pl, from 14 June 2024, read to 15 November 2026. ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates. Nothing here is modelled.