Question 1.1.29
The TSO in AAA, XXX, shows the occurred imbalances of previous periods and the active companies shall try to find a partner to offset the positions on bilaterally basis. If the companies cannot find offsetting volumes the TSO finally balances the accounts.
Could you please specify if pre-arranged contracts to offset the volumes are regarded as balancing contracts or as bilateral contracts which needs to be reported under REMIT?
In case they have to be reported, we would like to make ACER aware that the transaction timestamp is after the delivery start date which seems to be conflicting according to remarks in the letter to improve the data quality.
To our understanding only contracts with the TSO are defined as balancing contracts and the contracts needs to be reported as Table 2 contracts with monthly executions of the exchanged volumes to avoid balancing.
Answer
Please refer to Question 3.1.50. In the Agency’s view, a balancing trade is a contract between a party and a System Operator (SO), in most cases TSO, who is in charge of keeping the energy in the network/system (either gas or electricity) in balance.
It is the Agency’s understanding that in “…day after markets”, and any other retro-deal market, market participants balance/adjust their positions with other market participants. If this is the case, these contracts should be reported by both parties as wholesale energy products.
In the Agency’s view, balancing trades are well defined in Articles (2)9 to (2)11 of COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING REGULATION (EU) No 1348/2014, in the sense that they are related to balancing energy and services:
(9) ‘balancing energy’ means energy used by TSOs to perform balancing;
(10) ‘balancing capacity (reserves)’ means the contracted reserve capacity;
(11) ‘balancing services’ means
- for electricity: either or both balancing capacity and balancing energy;
- for natural gas: a service provided to a TSO via a contract for gas required to meet short term fluctuations in gas demand or supply.