Authorities gearing up for intraday market entry of traders

Authorities are picking up the pace on moves needed to also enable traders to begin participating in Greece’s intraday electricity market, one of the new wholesale markets emerging with the target model’s recent introduction.

The Greek energy exchange will forward its proposal for necessary market regulation amendments to RAE, the Regulatory Authority for Energy, within the next two months, energypress sources informed.

These revisions will take finalized shape through ongoing discussions between the energy exchange, as operator of the intraday market, power grid operator IPTO, managing international grid interconnections, and RAE.

The authorities are seeking to establish an optimal formula for the intraday market entry of electricity traders.

The talks, until now, have indicated that intraday day interconnection rights will not be required for transboundary trade between intraday markets that have not undergone coupling.

Therefore, traders will be able to participate in the intraday market by utilizing the amount of daily interconnection rights they have secured and not used for transboundary transactions in the day-ahead market.

The addition of traders to the intraday market promises to boost its liquidity, currently low. This will help liberate market players by offering them greater flexibility, limiting the pressure on the balancing market.

RAE upper limit on balancing market offers still possible

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.

PPC list of electricity import traders for 2019 contains surprises

The main power utility PPC’s list of traders chosen for electricity imports in 2019 from grid interconnections north of Greece contains certain surprises.

A number of major players have not made PPC’s recently approved list of traders for 2019, while firms limited to minor transboundary electricity trade roles last year –  through Greece’s grid interconnections with Bulgaria, Fyrom (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) and Albania – have been included.

PPC’s list of traders for 2019 is comprised of Alpiq, CEZ, EFT, Elpetra, Enmar, Freepoint, Grand Energy, HSE, Green, LET and Terna Energy Trading.

Four of these, Elpetra, Enmar, Freepoint and Grand Energy, were not involved in any trading activity with PPC last year.

According to a related monthly industry report, electricity imports last December were provided by six traders, these being Alpiq (33.302 MWh), CEZ (19 MWh), EFT Slovenia (21.295 MWh), HSE (28.375 MWh), GreenEnv (33.116 MWh) and LE Trading (1.417 MWh).

PPC and Alpiq operate a subsdiary firm in Bulgaria focused on transboundary electricity trade.