Keeping the Balance
Elia must always keep electricity consumption and production balanced to ensure system stability
Elia maintains the balance between electricity production and consumption at the national level in real time by utilizing market flexibility offered by Balancing Service Providers (BSP).
Like all other transmission system operators, Elia monitors the balance within its own control area. Each Balance Responsible Party (BRP) is responsible for balancing consumption and injection within their customer portfolio on a quarterly basis. However, when BRPs fail to do so, Elia takes the necessary steps to reduce the remaining imbalance between generated and consumed electricity. That’s where the BSPs come in.
BSPs help Elia to keep the balance...
To achieve this, Elia organizes balancing markets where it procures flexibility offered by the BSPs. Concretely, there are three different products which Elia relies on: frequency containment reserves (FCR), automatic Frequency Restoration Reserves (aFRR) and manual Frequency Restoration Reserves (mFRR). These products differ in how they are activated, how quickly they must reach full activation etc.
For more information, you can consult the page of each product:
...and are remunerated for it
You can use the simulation tool on Watts.Happening to get an estimate of what your asset could earn, considering its limitations. Please note that this is just an estimate based on historical data, where the revenue depends on continuously evolving market prices. Furthermore, realizing this revenue also requires investment and operational costs to unlock the flexibility.
How can you participate?
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Provide flexibility through an existing BSP
You can work with an existing BSP which will then offer flexibility on your behalf to Elia. Becoming a BSP with Elia requires significant implementation & operational effort to meet the quality standards we set for our products. Participating through an existing BSP can be especially interesting if you lack the resources or scale to do it yourself.
You can find a list of market parties here that are registered as BSP with Elia. Even if you will not become a BSP yourself, it might still be useful to go through the section below and learn about the steps a BSP will have to go through to valorize flexibility on your behalf.
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Become a BSP yourself
If you are interested to become a BSP yourself, you have to follow the following steps. For more information you can click on the links below or consult the T&Cs on the respective product pages.
- 1. Onboarding: This step includes arranging the contracts, implementing the IT set-up and registering delivery points. This step happens once, and once you are qualified you can participate to the services on a recurring basis (additional delivery points can be added continuously later on as well).
- 2. Bidding: By submitting capacity and energy bids, you can make your available flexibility known to Elia to be considered and potentially selected in the applicable markets
- 3. Activation: If your bids are selected, you will have to activate the service accordingly.
- 4. Testing & control: Elia verifies whether you delivered the balancing services in compliance with their requirements.
- 5. Settlement: Elia remunerates BSP for awarded capacity & requested energy. The remuneration is reduced by incentives, if the service was not delivered in compliance with the requirements.
How does Elia dimension the required volumes?
Elia determines the volume of balancing services that is required to keep the balance in the control area, taking into account forecast of renewable generation and the demand, as well as the risk of a dimensioning incident (for example, a sudden drop in generation following an unplanned outage of a power plant). In line with Article 213 of the Code of Conduct, Elia publishes following documents after approval by the regulator:
- the LFC block operational agreement specifying amongst others the dimensioning rules for Frequency Restoration Reserves or ‘FRR’ (also referred to as aFRR and mFRR);
- the LFC Means specifying the methodology which determines the volumes of balancing capacity for aFRR and mFRR to be procured.
How does Elia decide which products to activate?
Elia takes action to restore the balance by using balancing services in accordance with the rules for the compensation of quarter-hourly imbalances (entry into force: 1 December 2018), as approved by the regulator (also known the Balancing Rules).
When determining an imbalance within a BRP’s portfolio, Elia appliesimbalance tariffs proportional to the resources used by Elia to manage the imbalance in the control area.
Relevant documents
Where can you find relevant data?
The Balancing section of the Transparency on Grid Data contains, in near-real time, a wide range of information and data about restoring balance to the electricity system. These pages contain information and context on what is shown and are formatted already for easier interpretation.
Elia’s Open Data Portal contains several datasets related to Balancing. This portal allows you to easily filter, analyze and download the datasets, including through an API to retrieve the data programmatically.
How can you interact with us on this?
- Key Account Managers - As a first point of contact, you can always reach out directly to your Key Account Manager (KAM) if you already have one, or send an e-mail to contracting_as@elia.be. They will help you with any questions or concerns you might have.
- Users’ Group - Elia also organizes formal interactions with the market on various topics. You can find more information on the page on Users’ Group. Especially the gatherings of the Working Group Balancing Design & Solutions contain discussions relevant for balancing.
- Public Consultations - As the operator of Belgium’s transmission system, Elia regularly consults Belgian market parties and the general public through formal public consultations. You can learn more on the dedicated page.
