Green aggregators, believing their balancing costs are excessive, causing cash-flow problems and creating additional cost passed on to customers, have called for intervention and revisions from power grid operator IPTO and RAE, the Regulatory Authority for Energy.

RES units operating under incremental support contracts have assumed full balancing responsibilities for their electricity generation since November 30, when Greece entered Europe’s cross-border intraday XBID continuous market, through coupling with Italy and Bulgaria.

However, the implementation of a cap on the day-ahead and intra-day markets has created broader risks for green aggregators, including overestimating RES generation levels.

In such an event, the overestimation’s discrepancy is initially compensated based on the clearing price of the day-ahead market, or price cap, and then priced at the balancing market’s deviation price, which is not capped and may be many times over the day-ahead market level, a financial setback for green aggregators.

New non-compliance charges introduced on December 1 as a result of the cap represent an additional problem for green aggregators as they can lead to exceptionally high penalties, reaching levels well over those of balancing costs.