There is an ongoing debate on the introduction of capacity markets in most European countries while a few of them have already established capacity markets. Since the implementation of independent national capacity markets is not in line with the target of a pan-European internal electricity...

This paper provides the technical background, describes the market design and its development as well as summarizes the market results of the German system reserve capacity market and the balancing energy mechanism, which are the key tools for required balancing the of the electricity system.