Piecing together the 15-minute settlement
In this blog post, Advisor Tuomas Pulkkinen, who is responsible for the implementation of 15-minute imbalance settlement period in eSett, writes about the goals and challenges of the market changes with a main focus in the 15-minute project.
Change is often feared and resisted, thus also difficult, but at the same time it is inevitable. Without change, businesses, organisations, and individuals will have a hard time to survive and thrive. Imposed changes cause often even more discomfort, but the only way forward is to acknowledge it, face it and if possible, embrace it.
Over the past decade, ENTSO-E, ACER and the European Commission have set the ambitious framework for a huge number of changes, many of which are also quite major ones. These network codes cover a variety of topics and changes from connection, operations, and market, and they are supplemented with the Clean Energy Package. The main aim is of course to cut greenhouse gas emissions, increase the share of renewables and increase the market efficiency and harmonisation that we all want to achieve and support. The changes push us towards a future European electricity market by setting the edges for a large puzzle that should form the harmonised and greener future market.
The change – the rebuilding of the electricity market puzzle – is easier to handle when it is divided into smaller parts. Ones that are easier to outline and then build piece by piece. In 2018 after the publishing of a guideline on electricity balancing, we were working with a large puzzle piece: a combination of the single balance model and the 15-minute settlement. However, as we know the change proved to be too much, and the single balance model got separated from the 15-minute settlement resulting into two smaller segments of this puzzle. One of which is now finally ready and another on good progress.
For a while, it seemed that the change and timeline into 15-minute settlement was clear, but due to challenges in some of the key areas, the timing was reopened. Some of the timelines and scopes of the change will differentiate even within the Nordics during an interim period. This is something that we wanted to avoid at eSett, but also something that we were prepared for.
However, the goal is clear for us: “Provide a solution that would allow the different pieces to snap into place and finalize this one part of the market puzzle on our way to full 15-minute settlement and market resolutions.” Therefore, we have worked determinedly and hope that we can provide a solution that would glue the pieces together. A single solution that has enough flexibility to fulfil the different needs and bring us one step closer to the ultimate end result.
In the big picture, we are a small part of this change, not to mention all the other changes that have or are about to occur. It is however a large change for us, and we hope that our flexible solution makes it at least a bit easier for others to fit their own pieces into the puzzle.
There is still a lot of work ahead, but we feel confident that the change is now manageable, and the goals can be reached in time. This will most definitely not be the last change, instead it is only a one of many others. It is however an important piece in this difficult puzzle that we all try to piece together one change at a time.
We wish you good luck with this and other changes that you are facing. You are all welcome to test your 15-minute solutions against our test environment to ensure a successful commissioning. We settle, together and help the green shift to happen!