A bridge to 2025 (electricity regulation): EDSO views on ACER discussion paper
In November 2013, the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) opened public consultations respectively on “Energy Regulation: A bridge to 2025” and “Demand-Side Flexibility”, both aiming at better scoping the current challenges faced by the energy sector and assessing solutions to overcome them.
EDSO for Smart Grids is pleased to see that significant room for demand response management and better use of distribution electricity networks is made in the two documents for consultation. EDSO is willing to use this opportunity to emphasise the efforts distribution system operators (DSOs) are making to anticipate the changes in our energy landscape and to suggest ways to alter the existing regulatory framework in order to unlock the potential of demand-side flexibility.
DSOs are on the forefront of the electricity market evolution and have experienced deep changes over the last few years: unbundling, growing distributed energy resources connected to their grids, testing and deployment of smart meters.
In addition, new players are entering the electricity business (aggregators, energy managers…), and new technologies are expected to take off in the near future (electric vehicles) or are being researched (energy storage).
In this context EDSO used both consultations to highlight the need for the DSO’s role to evolve. DSOs should become neutral market facilitators: gathering and sharing data with retailers, aggregators and other authorised third-parties, easing entrance of new players in the market, measuring and validating the use of demand-side resources connected to the distribution grid.
EDSO welcomes the public consultation organised by ACER to gather stakeholder feedback on tomorrow’s electricity regulation. In this paper, EDSO highlights the regulatory changes needed in order to bridge the gap to 2020 and enable DSOs to evolve into active system operators and a neutral market facilitators while maintaining security of energy supply and a stable network.
Please see here for EDSO’s response to the parallel consultation from CEER on demand side flexibility.
