Important topics of the second day of the symposium „Energiehandel 2022“ was the European Single Market for Electricity and the possible split of the German-Austrian price zone.
Dr. Niels Ehlers of the transmission system operator 50Hertz stressed that feed-in management and re-dispatch measures due to increased feed-in of electricity from wind and PV have risen considerably since 2015. Last year measures for congestion management totaled more than 10 TWh leading to costs more than 1 bn. Euro. The installation of phase modifiers is one option to deal with current grid bottlenecks. In that way loop-flows through the Polish grid might be reduced. Increasingly the physical electricity network is not able to realize the trading flows and have to be corrected by the respective TSOs. In his view the joint German-Austrian price zone will be untenable over the long-term without grid extensions. This statement was well in line with Dr. Kathrin Tomaschki’s remark of considerable costs of the necessary grid reserve. Those costs could be reduced significantly by splitting the German-Austrian market zone.
The representative of the Austrian regulator Energie-Control however advocated the preservation of a common price zone between Germany and Austria, as this ensures security of supply, grid stability as well as a liquid market. Even though bottlenecks at the border occur in 8 % of all hours a year, the introduction of artificial trading borders by ACER would contradict the efforts of a Single European Electricity Market. In addition, he remarked that grid extension in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic could solve those bottlenecks and added “Austria […] is willing to financially contribute to interim solutions such as the grid reserve.”
