Early conclusions of the upcoming ACER Market Monitoring Report confirm that while the electricity wholesale markets continue to integrate across the EU, some significant challenges remain. In particular, the available cross border capacity remains insufficient, and this is partly due to important levels of unscheduled flows (UFs).
What are the unscheduled flows? Why are they relevant?
Discrepancies exist between the physical paths followed by power flows at a given moment in time and the paths anticipated from transactions triggering such flows. These discrepancies take the form of various “distortive” flows in the system, called unscheduled flows.
Transmission System Operators (TSOs) must anticipate the impact of unscheduled flows to ensure the integrity of the system and therefore reduce social welfare losses.
What is ACER’s position?
ACER believes that improving the capacity calculation methodologies and the bidding zone configurations will mitigate the impact of unscheduled flows in the short term. In the longer term, loop flows will be alleviated by investments in the transmission network.
ACER has been monitoring the evolution of unscheduled flows in Europe since 2012.
By gathering the relevant data, ACER has produced, for the first time, an animated illustration of this evolution over the years (2015-2020).
To access it, and to read more about the main findings, visit ACER's website.
