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).

Documents: (1) “FIRMe: Integration of Renewable Energy” — undated programme overview page; (2) “FIRMe Programme: results of the second auction now known” — published 2025-11-25 (the published date above).

• **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. Wiki framing: it is Portugal’s counterpart to Sweden’s SWITCH/NODES-based local flexibility markets. E-Redes operates the programme on the Piclo platform — a UK-origin platform also used by British DSOs (per the critical review), with a Portuguese instance at prt.picloflex.com.

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 (first-call documents dated 2023; the critical review lists FIRMe as a 2023 pilot)
• Growth reported only as an approximate multiple 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 account for the most facilities (94 of 163). Wiki inference, not stated in the sources: this resembles the aggregator-heavy pattern reported for Swedish LFMs; the sources give no MW split by participant type.

Post-auction timeline: Technical validation and qualification of providers by end 2025, followed by contract formalisation; operational use of the contracts scheduled for 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 in “service windows” for advance contracts (2-year bilateral forward contracts per the critical review), rather than a day-ahead or near-real-time spot market. Wiki inference: this structure gives providers revenue certainty and E-Redes capacity certainty; the sources do not describe the payment structure.

The Piclo platform hosts 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 a 10th operational live LFM as of late 2025 (the VITO study’s count of 9 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)).