Source - E-Redes FIRMe Programme

E-Redes FIRMe Programme — two web clippings from E-Redes’ official website describing the FIRMe local flexibility market programme. FIRMe = Flexibilidade Integrada em Regime de Mercado (Integrated Flexibility in a Market Regime). Language: English (original source pages are available in English on e-redes.pt/en).

Metadata

• Source 1: “FIRMe: Integration of Renewable Energy” — e-redes.pt/en/energy-transition/firme — undated programme overview page
• Source 2: “FIRMe Programme: results of the second auction now known” — e-redes.pt/en/news/2025/11/25/firme-programme-results-second-auction-now-known — published 2025-11-25
• Raw files: Raw/Clippings/FIRMe Integration of Renewable Energy.md, Raw/Clippings/FIRMe Programme results of the second auction now known.md
• Platform operator: Piclo (UK-origin flexibility platform; Portuguese instance at prt.picloflex.com; results data at data.piclo.com)
• Contact: flexibility@e-redes.pt (E-Redes); Flex-portugal@piclo.energy (Piclo Portugal)

Origins and mandate

FIRMe was launched in late 2022, specifically to anticipate DL 15/2022’s requirement to consider flexibility alternatives in network planning (ahead of legal mandate). The full planning methodology behind FIRMe — including the reserve price concept and probabilistic network analysis — is documented in Source - E-Redes PDIRD-E 2024 Proposta Inicial §2.2.

The key PDIRD-E finding from FIRMe’s analytical work: for efficient conventional investments (benefit/cost > 1), the reserve price is typically negative — flexibility cannot compete because conventional grid investments generate broad co-benefits (loss reduction, quality improvements) that flexibility services cannot replicate. FIRMe’s solution is probabilistic planning to the 95th percentile: plan the grid for 95% confidence, contract flexibility for the residual 5% of operating states. This narrow but definable window is where FIRMe operates.

What FIRMe is

FIRMe is E-Redes’ local distribution-level flexibility procurement programme. It is Portugal’s operational equivalent of Sweden’s SWITCH/NODES-based local flexibility markets. E-Redes operates the programme on the Piclo platform — the same UK-origin platform used by UK Power Networks and several British DSOs, deployed in Portugal as a separate instance.

Three products:

The Restore product is unusual in European LFM design — most markets address congestion management only; FIRMe explicitly covers post-fault restoration as a third product category.

Geographic scope: 17 zones across Portugal’s distribution network.

Contract structure: 2-year bilateral forward contracts (per the academic review in Source - Local Flexibility Markets in Europe Critical Review (2025)).

Minimum bid size: 10 kW (lowest among European LFMs with documented minimum bid sizes, tied with British DSOs).

Pricing: Pay-as-bid. Direction: upward (generation increase or consumption reduction).

Auction history

First auction (2023)

• Baseline reference; specific figures not disclosed in these sources
• All subsequent metrics reported as multiples of the first auction

Second auction (November 2025)

Asset mix (163 qualified assets):

• Aggregator-operated facilities: 94
• Industrial customer facilities: 41
• EV charging station operators: 15
• Storage facilities: 7
• Producers: 6

Aggregators dominate by asset count (94 of 163), consistent with the pattern in Swedish LFMs where aggregators register the most individual assets but energy companies provide the bulk of MW capacity.

Post-auction timeline: Technical validation and qualification of providers by end 2025; contract formalisation by end 2025; operational use from January 2026.

Participation process

Flexibility service providers (FSPs) register at prt.picloflex.com. Registration requires:

1. Platform registration
2. Pre-qualification (technical capability assessment)
3. Qualification (formal approval)
4. Participation in auction windows

Eligible assets: customer/producer assets with modellable consumption or production, EVs, distributed generation units, battery storage systems.

Market design positioning

FIRMe is a forward auction market — providers bid into fixed seasonal/annual auction windows for advance contracts, rather than a day-ahead or near-real-time spot market. The 2-year bilateral contract structure provides revenue certainty for FSPs (availability and activation payments) and capacity certainty for E-Redes.

The Piclo platform operates as a neutral market platform hosting FIRMe opportunity postings, bid collection, and public results publication (data.piclo.com).

Documentation (second call, 2025)

• Details of opportunities published on Piclo platform
• Indicative prices of published opportunities
• Flexibility services contract
• Regulations for tenders for flexibility services

Relevance to wiki

• Flexibility Market: FIRMe is documented as fully operational by Sassone et al. (2025) and likely among the handful of operational EU live LFMs as of late 2025 (the VITO study’s count of 7 may not have captured its second auction, concluded November 2025). The 7× bid growth from first to second auction demonstrates rapid market development and growing FSP confidence. The Restore product (post-fault restoration) is a product type not found in any Swedish market and warrants attention as a potential product extension.
• Distribution Network Development Plan: FIRMe is E-Redes’ operational instrument for the flexibility solutions recommended by ERSE in the PDIRD-E 2024 opinion — the market-based mechanism that makes acesso com restrições and flexibility vs. reinforcement comparison operational rather than theoretical. See Source - ERSE Parecer PDIRD-E 2024.
• Aggregation: Aggregators account for 94 of 163 qualified FIRMe assets — confirming the aggregator-dominant supply pattern seen in Swedish markets.
• Baseline Methods: FIRMe uses Mean X-in-Y + correction baseline method (per Source - Local Flexibility Markets in Europe Critical Review (2025)).