Balancing energy
Balancing energy
The Gaswirtschaftsgesetz (Natural Gas Act) defines balancing energy as the difference between supply and offtake in a balancing group. An organised balancing market has been established in the Eastern control area to provide and price physical balancing energy.The balancing groups must endeavour to balance supply and demand. Supply in a balancing group comprises both gas fet into the control area and imports from other balancing groups. Offtake is the sum of consumption within the balancing group, exports to other balancing groups and offtake from the control area. The Natural Gas Act defines balancing energy as the difference between supply and demand in a balancing group per metering period. The metering period in the Austrian gas market is one hour.
The calculation, allocation and settlement of balancing energy is one of the duties of clearing and settlement agents imposed by section 33b para 1 item 2 Natural Gas Act. To enable them to perform this function, the clearing and settlement agents receive all the import, export, production, storage movement and trading schedules from the balancing group representatives, and the system operators send them all the meter readings for handovers of shipments at network exit points and for quantities of gas consumed by suppliers active in the network. The clearing and settlement agents thus have a complete set of data for the control area. During the monthly clearing procedures carried out by the clearing and settlement agents, the latter compute the net quantity of balancing energy per hour and balancing group and bill it.
An important consideration when introducing the balancing group system was arriving at a competitive mechanism for the procurement of balancing energy. Because of this a framework for an organised balancing market was created in the Eastern contol area at the time of liberalisation. This is run by the clearing and settlement agent, Gas Clearing and Settlement AG (AGCS), as a day-ahead market. The quantities of gas that the control area manager, Austrian Gas Grid Management AG (AGGM), physically injects into the transmission grid or withdraws from it to maintain network stability are bought and sold on the balancing market. The prices paid on the balancing market yield an hourly clearing price which the clearing and settlement agent applies as the price of each hour of accrued balancing energy.
Monthly gas balancing market report
E-Control began publishing monthly reports on developments in the balancing market (quantities and prices) in October 2003.
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