Electricity Balancing
The EB Regulation
The Electricity Balancing Regulation establishes the common principles for procuring, activating and exchanging of the balancing services.
These binding requirements implement and ensure a proper functioning of the integrated electricity market in the balancing timeframe and regulate the activities of Transmission System Operators (TSOs), national regulatory authorities and ACER.
What are its core elements?
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Rules for Balancing Service Providers and Balancing Responsible Parties: the terms and conditions related to balancing defined at national level should provide fair, transparent and non-discriminatory rules for all actors involved in the balancing markets, ensuring adequate and fair competition.
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Exchange of balancing capacity and cross-zonal capacity allocation: these rules enable TSOs to jointly procure and use balancing capacity, forming broader cooperation, benefiting from economic reserve providing resources outside their area.
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Common European balancing energy platforms: the integration of balancing energy markets is facilitated by European platforms that apply common merit order list to ensure cost-efficient activation of balancing energy bids across Europe.
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Harmonisation of imbalance settlement: The imbalance settlement is a national mechanism, and its harmonisation at European level provides a consistent application of the rules across member states. This ensures that market participants have the same incentives to deliver energy, increasing the balancing markets’ overall efficiency.
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Settlement rules between TSOs: The EB Regulation also ensures that all the exchanges between TSOs are settled with common rules, guaranteeing a fair and non-discriminatory approach.
