A decision by RAE, the Regulatory Authority for Energy, on whether to intervene further following yesterday’s decisions to suspend negative prices for balancing energy market offers and limit them in accordance with minimum production levels that are technically possible will depend on how balancing market prices unfold, authority officials have pointed out.

The possibility of an upper limit for balancing energy market offers cannot be ruled out, the RAE officials explained.

Commenting on yesterday’s initiatives by RAE, electricity producers, on the one hand, and non-vertically integrated suppliers, traders and major-scale consumers, on the other, offered conflicting opinions.

The imposition of a zero-level threshold for offers was not necessary as extreme prices, or behavior, no longer exist in the balancing market to justify the measure, electricity producers contended, warning that it could prompt new market distortions.

The producers also expressed concern over RAE’s preference to not set a specific time period for the negative-price suspension’s validity.

At the other end, Antonis Kontoleon, the head official of EVIKEN, Greece’s Association of Industrial Energy Consumers, noted that RAE has taken a step back from its own proposal for an upper limit on balancing energy market offers as well as upper and lower limits for balancing capacity market offers.

Industrial energy consumers will remain dependent on whether balancing market participants exercise restraint, the EVIKEN chief underlined.

Suppliers and traders described the two RAE measures implemented yesterday as a first step in the right direction.

The impact of the measure limiting offers in accordance with minimum production levels that are technically possible cannot be quantified, they noted, adding the zero-level threshold measure will prevent sharp price rises but would prove insufficient if, for any reason, self-restraint stops being observed in the balancing market.

One trader noted that the zero-level threshold, to prove effective, must be maintained until power grid operator IPTO completes the “western corridor” grid in the Peloponnese.