The balancing market is a real-time system run by Transmission System Operators (TSOs) to match electricity supply with demand, typically in 15-minute settlement windows under ENTSO-E rules. It exists to keep the grid physically stable, and nothing more.

Don't get mixed up - the Energy Attribute Certificate market is a completely different thing. The two worlds occasionally get confused, but they solve different problems: balancing markets keep supply and demand matched in real time on the grid, while certificates are an accounting layer that lets sustainability teams prove where their electricity came from.