Since the founding of E-Bridge, supporting European cooperation projects for energy market integration has been a core part of our expertise. We are proud to look back on a long history of successful implementation projects, including flow-based cross-border capacity calculation, day-ahead and intraday market coupling, the development of balancing platforms, and cross-border coordination to ensure the secure operation of the European power system.
A particular highlight in 2025 were the European Balancing Platforms, MARI and PICASSO, which our PMO and expert team has supported for more than six years. MARI – the Manually Activated Reserves Initiative is the European implementation project for the creation, future development, and operation of the European platform for energy from manually activated frequency restoration reserves (mFRR). More details can be found here on the ENTSO-E webpage. PICASSO is the Platform for the International Coordination of Automated Frequency Restoration and Stable System Operation; the European platform for the exchange of balancing energy from frequency restoration reserves with automatic activation (aFRR). More details can be found here on the ENTSO-E webpage.
With MARI and PICASSO operating successfully for over three years, more and more Transmission System Operators (TSOs) are joining and exchanging cross-border balancing energy from frequency restoration reserves – both manual and automatic. This collaboration is shaping a more resilient and efficient European power system.
In 2025, our consultants Anne Frank-El-Barudi, Dilan Özyildirim, Kai Rendigs, Max Lauer, Mike Hopmans and Susanne Dornick supported the MARI project. Fabian Heus, Mike Hopmans and Susanne Dornick also contributed to the PICASSO project in various aspects. Their tasks ranged from classical PMO support – organizing, preparing, and facilitating meetings, drafting minutes, ensuring timely completion of actions and deliverables, planning and risk management – to providing in-depth expertise. This included describing technical and business change specifications, coordinating IT tests, supporting TSOs during their connection to the platforms, managing budgets and costs, assisting with invoicing, enhancing operational procedures, drafting external communications, and managing the revising of the entire balancing platform agreements.
We look forward to supporting the accession of the remaining TSOs to MARI and PICASSO and to continued successful cooperation and operation of the balancing platforms.
