National
Energy Regulatory Council (NERC) presenting Lithuania’s position in the EU
Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) activity, informs that ACER on 28th of January published
three decisions on the framework for implementation of EU-wide trading
platforms for electricity balancing, which will effectively integrate all
national balancing markets into one single EU electricity balancing market.
A common balancing market will
allow EU Member States to share the resources used by their transmission system
operators to make generation equal demand. This should help increase security
of supply, limit carbon emissions and diminish costs to customers.
Two of the ACER decisions
govern the electricity balancing from frequency restoration reserves with
manual activation (mFRR) and with automatic activation (aFRR). A third decision
establishes a harmonised methodology on pricing of balancing energy.
Following the ACER decisions,
Transmission System Operators (TSOs) will establish two common European trading
platforms that will enable all balancing energy bids to compete at EU level and
thereby promote competition across EU Member States.
The bids for upward or
downward balancing energy from balancing service providers across the EU will
be available on these two platforms and all TSOs will be able to balance their
national transmission systems by activating the cheapest bids available. This
will enable TSOs to balance their systems in a more cost-efficient and secure
way.
The harmonised methodology to
price balancing energy will support the establishment of common platforms. All
balancing energy bids traded through the platform will receive a marginal price
equal to the price of the bid that clears the market. This is a significant
step forward as currently most TSOs use pay-as-bid pricing. Marginal pricing
provides efficient price signals for existing balancing service providers and
for potential new investors.
You can access the Decisions here.
