The exchange plans to start GO trading before official Hub connection with registration now open to participants. The platform will facilitate auctions of subsidy-free GOs three times per day with each lasting 20 minutes and results published immediately.
Registered sellers will be required to transfer the intended GO volumes from their SEDA account to the equivalent IBEX account. IBEX will be selling the GOs on behalf of the sellers as a counterparty to the deals.
GOs will be automatically transferred to the buyers’ registry account after a successful auction. Initially, only unspecified renewable GOs will be on offer with plans to launch technology-specific products later. Trading will be limited to spot products.
The GOs will be traded in local currency and will switch automatically to euro once Bulgaria joins the euro zone (currently expected in 2026).
Once SEDA initiates Hub connection, foreign buyers and sellers will be able to participate and take advantage of the instant transfers between the SEDA registry and the rest of the AIB.
Foreign entities could still sign up and take part in the auctions even now if they have an account with SEDA. However, when doing cross-border trades ahead of the Hub connection, the transfers will not be done automatically by SEDA. Currently, only a handful of European markets accept Bulgarian GOs for disclosure with transfers deemed a cumbersome process.
IBEX will charge a BGN 2,000 (EUR 1,022) yearly fee, a BGN 100 (EUR 51) auction initiation fee as well as a BGN 0.05/MWh (EUR 0.025/MWh) transaction commission. The latter will be wavered in the first three months of the GO platform operation. The official platform launch date is yet to be announced.
The launch of the IBEX GO auction platform is expected to bring more transparency to the market and boost liquidity, especially after full Hub connection. The platform has been planned for a long time with an initial launch deadline set for the end of 2023.
The much-anticipated Hub connection is also likely to boost cancellations as Bulgarian GOs will start being freely exported to the rest of the AIB.
Currently, GO trading is mostly done bilaterally or via sporadic selling auctions organised by state-owned utility NEK which operates most Bulgarian hydropower assets. However, auction results are never made public.
The last announced auction took place in January 2025 offering various monthly and quarterly volumes from production year 2024 with minimum prices ranging between EUR 0.08 – 0.14/MWh.
Bulgarian GO prices are expected to rise to AIB level once Hub connection is initiated. At the moment, Bulgarian prices are heavily discounted as they are not accepted by many European countries for disclosure.
Last year, Bulgaria adopted an ordinance regulating the Bulgarian GO market. The regulation stipulated that GOs issued to producers under the old feed-in-tariff scheme would be automatically transferred to the household suppliers, while GOs issued under the contracts-for-premium scheme could be re-distributed to various market players, including electricity traders and producers. This left the door open for these market players to trade these GOs.
In practice, however, such redistribution is not happening, according to a local source. The fact that IBEX will only trade subsidy-free GOs also suggests that no supported GOs will be available on the market.
Bulgaria issued 4.5 TWh of renewable GOs to subsidy-free producers last year, roughly the same as in 2023, according to IBEX data. The issued volume remained unchanged despite an increase in subsidy-free solar capacity in 2024 due to lower hydropower production year on year.
However, the volume of transferred unsupported GOs grew by 30 % year on year to almost 6 TWh, suggesting increased trading interest as more GOs changed hands between market players.
Bulgaria’s total renewable capacity stood at around 7 GW at the end of 2024, comprising 2.4 GW hydro, 0.7 GW onshore wind and 3.8 GW solar, according to SEDA data. Around 1 GW of new subsidy-free solar capacity is expected to come online in 2025, according to estimates by grid operator ESO.
In the long term, Bulgaria targets 6.8 GW solar and 2 GW onshore wind by 2030 which are expected to come online without government support. This means that future capacity growth would increase GO supply on the market. Although some of these GOs are likely to be bundled into Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs).
The Hub connection would also open the door to signing virtual PPAs. The Bulgarian PPA market has seen a rather muted interest from local offtakers due to a government scheme that compensates non-household consumers when the electricity price rises above a set threshold. Some energy-intensive companies have also invested in solar capacity for self-consumption.
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