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Glossary · Energy industry & energy transition

Direct marketer (Direktvermarkter)

Direct Marketer renewable energies electricity market market premium Direct Marketing

A direct marketer sells electricity from generation plants on electricity markets. This can be done on behalf of the plant operator or for its own account if it takes delivery of the electricity commercially. In Germany, the term is mainly associated with electricity from renewable energies. Many wind, photovoltaic, biomass and hydropower plants no longer receive a fixed feed-in tariff but are integrated into the market through direct marketing. The Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG 2023) refers to the Direktvermarktungsunternehmer (direct marketing company). This means whoever is commissioned by the plant operator with the direct marketing of electricity from renewable energies or mine gas, or who commercially takes delivery of this electricity. In this respect, it may be neither a final consumer of this electricity nor a grid operator.

Under the EEG, direct marketing means the sale of electricity to third parties. Excluded is electricity that is consumed in the immediate spatial vicinity of the plant and is not routed through a grid. Technically, there is therefore no special line from the wind farm to a particular customer. The electricity continues to flow physically according to the rules of the grid. Direct marketing is a commercial process: the kilowatt hours generated are allocated to a balancing group, forecast, traded and settled. Energy quantity is measured in kilowatt hours or megawatt hours. For ongoing marketing, capacity in kilowatts or megawatts also matters. It shows which quantities are expected to be fed in at which point in time.

The direct marketer takes on tasks that a single plant often cannot perform itself or for which building up the capability would not pay off. These include generation forecasts, schedule notifications, trading on the day-ahead and intraday markets, balancing group management, settlement and communication with grid operators. In subsidised direct marketing, remote control of the plant is added. Larger portfolios pool many plants. In this way, forecast errors of individual plants partly offset each other, and trading processes can be organised professionally.

Legal framework in Germany (as of EEG 2023)

Who must market directly? Under the EEG 2023 currently in force, this depends mainly on installed capacity. A fixed feed-in tariff is regularly available only for plants with up to 100 kilowatts and a statutorily determined applicable value (anzulegender Wert). Larger new plants must in principle market their electricity directly if they want to receive EEG support. For them, the so-called fallback tariff (Ausfallvergütung) exists only for emergencies. It is paid for at most three consecutive calendar months and a total of six months per year, and it is lower than the regular support. If these maximum durations are exceeded, the entitlement lapses for the entire month. Older existing plants and smaller plants may switch to direct marketing voluntarily.

The EEG links subsidised direct marketing with technical and metering obligations. The plant operator must maintain technical equipment through which the direct marketer can retrieve the actual feed-in at any time and remotely control the feed-in capacity. The operator must also grant the marketer the authority to do so. For small plants of up to 100 kilowatts, deviating agreements are possible under certain conditions. In addition, a plant may be allocated to direct marketing only if its entire feed-in is measured and balanced in quarter-hour resolution. Plant operators may change their direct marketer. If an operator sells itself on the exchange or directly to final consumers, it exercises the direct marketer's powers itself.

The EEG recognises two forms of direct marketing: the subsidised variant with a market premium and the other direct marketing (sonstige Direktvermarktung) without an EEG payment entitlement. The other variant occurs, for example, in electricity supply contracts with companies or for plants after the end of support. For new plants, a government draft of an EEG amendment is available (often called EEG 2027). Under it, the fixed tariff for new plants is to largely disappear and direct marketing is to become mandatory for smaller plants in stages. Until these changes have been adopted and come into force, the rules of the EEG 2023 described here apply.

Distinction from electricity supplier, grid operator and aggregator

A direct marketer is not automatically an electricity supplier for final consumers. A supplier sells electricity to households, commercial businesses or industry. For this it handles procurement, the customer contract, settlement and the obligations on the consumption side. The direct marketer, by contrast, is on the generation side and markets electricity fed in from plants. One company can perform both roles, but the functions remain separate.

The grid operator is also something different. It is responsible for grid connection, grid operation, grid security and the physical intake of the electricity. Electricity trading aimed at achieving market revenues for individual plants is not part of its tasks. The EEG therefore expressly excludes the grid operator from the definition of the Direktvermarktungsunternehmer. If a grid operator curtails a plant because of a grid bottleneck, this is a grid operation measure and not a marketing decision.

The term overlaps with the aggregator and the virtual power plant. An aggregator pools decentralised plants or consumers to make them usable on the market, for example for balancing energy, flexibility or electricity trading. A direct marketer can act as an aggregator if it brings many plants together technically and commercially. However, not every aggregator is a direct marketer within the meaning of the EEG. And not every direct marketing arrangement already uses actively controllable flexibility.

Market premium and revenue mechanics

In subsidised direct marketing, the plant operator does not sell its electricity to the grid operator at a fixed rate. It earns market revenues and additionally receives the sliding market premium from the grid operator. It compensates the difference between the applicable value (anzulegender Wert) and a market value (Marktwert) of the respective energy source. The applicable value is set by law or determined in a tender. The market value is an average value, usually a monthly value for wind and photovoltaics. An example: with an applicable value of 7 cents per kilowatt hour and a market value of 5 cents, the market premium is 2 cents. If the market value is above the applicable value, the premium falls to zero. How high the revenues are in detail depends on the plant type, year of commissioning, tender result and the version of the EEG applicable in each case.

The rules for negative prices are particularly important. If the day-ahead price is negative, the applicable value falls to zero under certain conditions, and the market premium lapses (§ 51 EEG). For existing plants, different minimum durations of negative prices apply depending on the year of commissioning and size. The Solarspitzengesetz (Solar Peak Act) tightened the rule: for new plants commissioned since 25 February 2025, the entitlement lapses from the first negative quarter hour. These periods are partly made up at the end of the support period under § 51a EEG. For direct marketers, this makes controlling plants in phases of negative prices economically more important.

In this model, the direct marketer is the interface between plant and market. Typically, it passes the market revenue on to the plant operator and retains a marketing fee. Other models are also possible: fixed service fees, shares in additional revenues, discounts on the market value, rules for negative prices and agreements on controlling the plant. The term direct marketer therefore says nothing by itself about who bears which price risk. That is governed by the contract and the statutory framework.

Direct marketing is not the same as full market integration of renewable energies. The market premium continues to secure a considerable part of the revenues. Moreover, not every plant can respond flexibly to price signals. A photovoltaic plant without storage can hardly shift its feed-in in time. A wind turbine can be curtailed at negative prices but then loses generation. Biomass plants have considerably more controllable capacity, provided fuel supply, heat use and technical design allow it.

Forecasts, schedules and balancing group risks

For the electricity market, it is not only the annual quantity of a plant that counts. What matters is how much electricity is fed in during each quarter hour. The EEG therefore requires quarter-hourly metering and balancing for direct marketing. Direct marketers produce generation forecasts from weather data, plant data, availabilities and historical feed-in patterns. From these, schedules are derived for trading and for the balancing group system.

If actual feed-in deviates from the schedule, balancing energy arises. The deviations are offset and settled in the balancing group. The direct marketer therefore has an interest in good forecasts, in quick corrections in intraday trading and in a reliable data connection. For wind and photovoltaics, deviations are not a matter of lack of discipline but a consequence of weather-dependent generation. The task is to translate this uncertainty into tradable and billable processes.

This is where direct marketing differs from a mere offtake guarantee. An offtaker could promise to buy every kilowatt hour fed in at a fixed price. A direct marketer, by contrast, must also manage the time profile of the feed-in. This becomes more important the more renewable electricity is in the system, because the value of a kilowatt hour then depends more strongly on the point in time. Electricity in a windy night with low demand is worth less on the market than electricity in a tight evening hour.

Market-based and grid-related curtailment

Direct marketers are often described across the board as causing or preventing curtailment. There are two fundamentally different cases. Market-based curtailment is decided by the direct marketer within the framework of the contract, for example at negative prices. Grid-related curtailment, by contrast, is ordered by the grid operator. Since 1 October 2021, it has been carried out via Redispatch 2.0. In this, the former redispatch with large power plants and the previous feed-in management for renewable and CHP plants were merged. Redispatch 2.0 in principle concerns plants from 100 kilowatts. Responsibilities, cost consequences and legal bases differ considerably in the two cases. The direct marketer can steer in market terms but does not decide on physical grid security.

Significance for the electricity system

Direct marketers make decentralised, weather-dependent generation usable for existing market processes. Without forecasting, balancing group allocation and trading, very many individual feed-ins could hardly be sensibly translated into exchange prices, schedules and settlements. In the past, a few companies planned the dispatch of large power plants. Today, very many plants feed in, with different sizes, different owners and technical characteristics. The direct marketer pools them so that they fit into a market model with schedules, balancing groups and time-differentiated prices.

Their role grows with the share of renewable energies. Then very low or negative prices, a strongly fluctuating residual load, regional grid bottlenecks and short-term adjustment needs occur more often. Direct marketers can respond: with better forecasts, controllable plants, integrated storage or the combination of flexible consumers with generation portfolios. What of this is economically possible, however, does not depend on the marketer alone. Technical equipment, metering concepts, market rules, grid charges, support rules and connection conditions also play a role.

With regard to flexibility, the role is ambivalent. The direct marketer can make existing flexibility visible, value it and market it. But it cannot extract flexibility from plants whose technical or legal conditions do not permit shifting. Whether a plant curtails at a negative exchange price depends on many factors: support entitlements, opportunity costs, technical minimum outputs, heat supply obligations, grid requirements and contract rules. For security of supply, too, it is only one building block. It does not replace firm capacity, grid reserve, balancing energy and long-term investment decisions.

Typical oversimplifications

  • "Direct marketers bring green electricity to the exchange, so the system question is solved": Exchange trading is only one part of the task. Equally important are data quality, availability, remote control, balancing group risk, regulatory settlement and the question of whether price signals reach the plant at all.

  • "Direct marketing means green electricity for a specific customer": The sale of wind power does not describe a physical electricity flow to a specific offtaker. For green electricity supplies, supply contracts, guarantees of origin and balancing on the consumption side are decisive. For electricity supported with a market premium, guarantees of origin can in principle not be used in Germany.

  • "The direct marketer curtails plants during grid bottlenecks": Grid-related interventions are ordered by the grid operator within the framework of Redispatch 2.0. The direct marketer steers in market terms.

  • "Direct marketer is just another word for electricity trader": This refers to a specialised role between plant operator, power exchange, balancing group, grid operator and support regime. It turns decentralised generation into tradable, forecast and billable electricity quantities without solving all system questions.

Sources

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Edited by eCMS on 11.11.2026 19:18

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