EPEX SPOT Exchange Council Welcomes Remit Data Reporting Services - New Exchange Council To Be Elected In May

The Exchange Council of EPEX SPOT, at its latest meeting in Milan, welcomed the REMIT data reporting services provided in the near future, discussed the design of the legally planned capacity market in France and approved the mode of the upcoming Exchange Council elections. The first meeting of the Exchange Council in 2015 was held in Milan on 18 March 2015 and was chaired by Peter Heydecker.

The energy sector is asked to report trading data towards ACER in the context of REMIT. In order to support members with this task, a new reporting service will be implemented as of 7 October 2015. Individual data will be made available to the member on a daily basis in ACER format. A reporting service towards ACER will be offered to all members wishing to benefit from it. EPEX SPOT currently enrols as Registered Reporting Mechanism. “Transparency is a key asset of the power market”, says Peter Heydecker, Chairman of the Exchange Council. “In this regard, the REMIT data reporting is an important step forward. The services provided by EPEX SPOT will ease this challenge for many members.”

Looking at the market itself, the trading with 15-minute contracts will be extended to the con-tinuous Intraday market in Austria in the second half of 2015. This was voted by the Exchange Council during the meeting. Cross-border matching of the flexibility product with German and Swiss 15-minute contracts is integral part of the extension.

15-minute contracts were first introduced in December 2011 on the German Intraday market and have since then been a success story. They were extended in June 2013 to Switzerland at the moment of the launch of the Swiss Intraday market, with the possibility to match these contracts across the German-Swiss border. Almost 10 TWh have been traded in 15-minute contracts over the time, with a volume of well over 300 GWh per month in the recent past.

The elections of the new Exchange Council will take place in May 2015. As a first step, EPEX SPOT members are invited to nominate their candidates until 5 April 2015. The candidates can be a company executive or technical expert familiar with spot power trading. EPEX SPOT will then publish the registry of voters and the list of candidates on its website. The elections will be held by electronic vote from 30 April until 19 May. The results will be published on the EPEX SPOT website on 21 May. The newly elected Exchange Council will meet on 10 June 2015 in Leipzig, Germany. “The Council is the parliament of the Exchange and an essential interface for communication with our members”, says Jean-François Conil-Lacoste, Chairman of the Man-agement Board of EPEX SPOT. “As such, the Council makes a real difference when it comes to market design questions, and we appreciate its valuable input.”

The Exchange Council was informed about the current implementation of a decentralized capacity mechanism in France and plans by EPEX SPOT to launch an organized market for trading of capacity certificates. Concerns have been raised that supply in France could not be secured as fast increase of peak consumption and alleged difficulties in fixed costs recovery for generators could become a matter of security of supply in the medium term. In the French adequacy outlook, the Loss of Load Probability – an indicator of security of supply – exceeds the acceptable adequacy level already from 2017 on. 

In the decentralized capacity mechanism that is being implemented by French authorities and grid operator RTE, the development of an organised market for capacity certificates would help market participants fulfil their obligations (i.e. suppliers) and value their capacities (i.e. capacity owners) and would provide a transparent and reliable price reference for capacity certificates. The market could be organised through several auctions per year, with trading of standardised certificates for future winter periods. The Exchange council acknowledges the implementation of a capacity mechanism in France and is looking forward to the final design options of the organ-ized exchange for capacity certificates that EPEX will implement.

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The Exchange Council of EPEX SPOT is an official body of the Exchange. 16 members and 7 permanent guests represent adequately the diversity of economic and corporate profiles that exists among the Exchange Members from various sectors: producers, power trading companies, transmission system operators, regional suppliers and financial service providers, as well as commercial consumers and academics. Its missions include in particular the adoption of the Exchange Rules and the Code of Conduct of EPEX SPOT and their amendments. The Exchange Council approves new trading systems as well as new contracts or market areas and approves the appointment of the Head of the Market Surveillance Office. It meets up quarterly.

The European Power Exchange EPEX SPOT SE operates the power spot markets for Ger-many, France, Austria and Switzerland (Day-Ahead and Intraday). Together these countries ac-count for more than one third of the European power consumption. EPEX SPOT also acts as market operating service provider for the Hungarian Power Exchange HUPX and operates the coupling between the Czech, the Slovak, the Hungarian and the Romanian markets on behalf of the local Exchanges. It is a European company (Societas Europaea) based in Paris with branches in Leipzig, Bern and Vienna. Over 220 companies from Europe are active on EPEX SPOT. 382 TWh have been traded on EPEX SPOTs markets in 2014.