Information on the implementation of the second phase

1. Introduction

Following the requests of the regulators in their actions plans, the TSOs of the Central West European (CWE) region have organized themselves to prepare a harmonized set of Auction Rules (the CWE Auction rules) and the set up of a joint subsidiary to operate, as Joint Auction Office, a single auction platform for the region. CASC-CWE S.A. (Capacity Allocation Service Company – Central West Europe) has been designated as Joint Auction Office to operate the activities linked to the long-term explicit auctions.

In the communication which was sent out in September 2008, it was announced that the implementation would be done in several phases.


The first phase was implemented in November 2008:
Based on the current set of auction rules (IFB Rules, IFD Rules and TSO AO Rules), the current auction offices subcontracted some tasks concerning the organisation of the yearly and monthly auctions to CASC-CWE.
The activities concerned:
- Publication of the auction specifications, for each auction, including the characteristics of the auction i.e. the product made available, the day of the auction, the auction session opening and closing times, ...
- Bidding processing
- Calculation of the allocated capacities
- Communication of individual results to the market participants and publication of aggregated results.
This was done as from the end of 2008 for yearly and monthly auctions (for delivery period 2009).


The second phase:
This phase corresponds to the organisation of all explicit auctions by CASC-CWE on the basis of the harmonised CWE Auction Rules. In this phase, the new and harmonised auction principles are put into force.

This phase was initially planned for spring 2009 like it was communicated during the month of April 2009. As announced, a prerequisite for the launch of phase 2 was an official approval of the harmonized auction rules by the regulators of CWE region.
However the TSOs of CWE region had received from the regulatory authorities a list of requests and demands of clarification concerning the harmonized Auction Rules and they had to decide to postpone the launch of the second phase to a later date.

TSOs continued to work on the Auction Rules in close cooperation with the regulators and a new set of harmonised Auction Rules was submitted by end of July 2009.

The TSOs are now happy to announce that they received a positive answer from their different regulators and that the launch of the second phase is foreseen for the first half of October 2009.
Note : the French regulator (CRE) communicated a positive answer to RTE just after the audition of RTE held on the 3rd of September. The official deliberation from the CRE will be published one week after the audition.

This means that from then on CASC-CWE will also operate the registration of the participants, the secondary market, the daily auctions for German borders, the fallback for TLC (Trilateral Market Coupling), the programming authorizations, the financial guarantee and the settlement process.

Below you will find more details on the planning, operational issues (registration, file formats, ...) contractual issues, training etc.

2. References and/or abbreviations

To avoid any misunderstanding, this paragraph describes some references and abbreviations that are used in the present document.

- Current set of auction rules: the existing three sets of auction rules as applied at the moment and including:

o TSO AO Rules: the auction rules as applied at the moment on the Dutch interconnections,
o IFB Rules: the allocation rules as applied at the moment on the France-Belgium interconnection for the auctions (including the TLC fallback) and the intraday allocation,
o IFD Rules: the auction rules as applied at the moment on the France-Germany interconnection.
These set of rules are available on the websites of the present auction offices of the CWE region.

- CWE Auction Rules: the future rules for capacity allocation by explicit auctions within the Central West Europe Region

- Current auction offices: the existing auction offices within the CWE region and including:

o TSO Auction b.v. for the auctions on the Dutch interconnection,
o RTE for the auctions and the intraday allocation on the France-Belgium interconnection and one direction of the France-Germany interconnection,
o Amprion for the auctions on one direction of the France-Germany interconnection.

- Joint Auction Office (CASC-CWE): the entity which will be in charge of allocating the available capacity by explicit auctions within the Central West Europe Region.


- TLC: Trilateral Market Coupling

- Programming Authorization: the total capacity per participant on a border acquired at an auction taken into account secondary market activities and/or curtailments.


3. Phase 2 (October 2009)

This phase corresponds to the organisation of all explicit auctions by CASC-CWE on the basis of the harmonised CWE Auction Rules. In this phase, the new and harmonised auction principles are put into force.

This means that from this phase CASC-CWE will operate not only the yearly and monthly auctions, but also the daily auctions on German borders, as well as the registration of the participants, the secondary market, the programming authorizations, the data publication on internet, the financial guarantee and settlement process.

All the different activities are shown in the graph below :



CASC-CWE will also be responsible for the organisation of explicit daily auctions on the Dutch-Belgian border and/or Belgian-French border in case of TLC Fallback.

4. Contractual schema

During the autumn 2008, the regulators of CWE region have organized a market consultation on a first set of harmonized Auction Rules proposed by the TSOs of CWE region. Based on the results of this consultation and on other specific demands formulated by the regulators, the TSOs have submitted in April 2009 a new set of harmonized Auction Rules to the regulators.

However in May 2009 some other remarks and clarifications were received from the regulators, which lead to a new submission of harmonized auction rules by the end of July 2009.

This version is now accepted by the regulators and the approved and definite auction rules are published by the TSOs and CASC-CWE on their websites.

This CWE auction rules version 1.1 will replace the current auction rules available on the different borders for yearly, monthly and daily capacities as explained graphically in the schema below.


5. Planning of phase 2

Before CASC-CWE can start performing the auctions under the new rules the participants need to be registered at CASC-CWE by signing a declaration of acceptance to the new Auction Rules.
From now on CASC-CWE will open the registration including the business account arrangements, to the different participants.

To guarantee complete registration for the first yearly auction on the Dutch borders, all necessary registration forms have to be sent to CASC-CWE by the 25th of September. Participants who already have an access to the CASC-CWE IT system and who submit complete registration forms for Phase 2 will keep their current usernames and passwords.
After the last monthly auction for the delivery period of October 2009, CASC-CWE will have to update its Explicit Auction (EXAU) platform to be compliant with the new Auction Rules. Also some data has to be migrated from the current auction offices. This update and migration will be performed by CASC-CWE at the end of September/beginning of October. During this period, EXAU will not be available.

The first activity by CASC-CWE under the new CWE auction rules will be the first yearly auction on the Dutch Borders (BE-NL and DE-NL) planned on Tuesday 13 October and Wednesday 14 October respectively. Afterwards the CASC-CWE starts allocating the capacities under the new Auction Rules for products of November 2009 during week 43. This will be done through different steps.

As soon as the results for the auctions are published, the participants can start sending in their requests for resale and transfer in respect of the harmonized CWE auction rules.

On the 31st of October 2009, for delivery day November 1st 2009, CASC-CWE will start allocating the daily capacity on the German borders. Explicit daily auctions on Belgium borders, in case of TLC Fallback, will also be organised by CASC-CWE instead of RTE and TenneT, from that delivery day, November 1st 2009, on.

The final step will be the settlement and invoicing of the November products. Following the harmonised auction rules, this will be performed during December 2009.

The above information is illustrated graphically below:



Attention : 

Secondary market specificities :

1) For products of October 2009 the different auctions rules (TSO AO auction rules, IFB rules and IFD rules) will still apply until end of the month of October. This means that secondary market activities for delivery period of October must still be sent to the current auction offices (TenneT TSO Auction Office, RTE and Amprion).

2) Temporary suspension of the notifications of transfers and resales for the deilvery period of November/December 2009 : In order to migrate the already existing information about transfers and resales from the respective auction offices to the system of CASC-CWE, it will not be possible to submit any new transfers and/or resales to monthly auctions for the market period of November/December to the present auction offices and/or CASC-CWE during the period: 25 September 2009 until 5 October 2009. As from 6 October 2009, it will be possible to send to CASC-CWE the new transfer and/or resales to monthly auctions for the market period of November/December.

3) Auction Office Amprion specificity : changing of handling the secondary market (Transfers and Resales Long Term in the daily auction) in the direction DE-FR for the timeframe 29.10.2009 until 31.10.2009.

Considered the fact that CASC-CWE is going to operate the first daily auction DE-FR at 31.10.2009 for 01.11.2009 and due to this circumstance Amprion will have a system change, Amprion asks you in the case you want to transfer or resell yearly or monthly capacity in the daily auction for the delivery period from 29.10.2009 to 31.10.2009 (which will be still operated by Amprion) to send the Transfers/Resales before the deadline of 12:00h at 26.10.2009.

Otherwise Amprion will not be able to handle these Transfers or Resales and they won’t be considered 


Financial clauses for daily and monthly products until the end of October 2009 :

The invoices for daily and monthly products until the delivery period of 31.10.2009 will be sent by the current auction offices and will respect the Current set of auction rules. The financial clauses (invoicing, bank guarantee, late payment/default conditions…) applied to these products will follow the current set of auctions rules until the customer has paid his outstanding debts.

The invoices for daily and monthly products for the delivery period as from 01.11.2009 will be sent by CASC-CWE and will follow the CWE Auction Rules.


Financial clauses for yearly products 2009 :

The invoices for yearly products for 2009 corresponding to the delivery period of October, November and December 2009 will be sent by the current auction offices and not by CASC-CWE. The financial clauses (invoicing, bank guarantee, late payment/default conditions…) applied to these products will follow the Current set of auctions rules until the customer has paid his outstanding debts.

Concerning the bank guarantee, this means in particular that:

• For the direction Germany-France : the auction office Amprion is going to maintain the bank guarantee until the customer has paid his outstanding debts. Afterwards will send to their discharge the guaranties back to the customers.

• For the France-Belgium border and the France-Germany direction, RTE is going to maintain the bank guarantee until the customer has paid his outstanding debts. Afterwards, RTE will adapt the guarantee to the situation of its customer, depending on the number of borders out of CWE region on which this customer is registered.

• For the Dutch borders, TenneT TSO Auction Office is going to maintain the bank guarantee until the customer has paid his outstanding debts. Afterwards TenneT TSO Auction Office will send to their discharge the guaranties, if any, back to the customers.


Except for the application of the financial clauses listed above, the 2009 yearly products for November and December 2009 will be governed by the terms and conditions set forth in the CWE Auction Rules.



6. What will change for the market participants ?

This chapter only presents the most significant changes for market participants.

• CASC-CWE will be the only point of contact for the market participants concerning the operation of explicit auctions within the CWE region. The TSOs will remain the points of contact for the CWE Auction Rules, however the declaration of acceptance will be signed with CASC-CWE.

• All information exchanges concerning explicit auctions (bids, results, resale or transfer notification, programming authorizations, …) will be done directly between CASC-CWE and the market participants. The present auction offices will no longer play an intermediate role; the TSOs will prolong their present role when it comes to the nomination/reservation step.

• The files already used during phase 1 of the project (bids, auctions’ results) will remain the same.
Concerning the new files (programming authorizations, secondary market,…), the participants need to send and will receive data following the new IT specifications. Modifications of IT-tools at the participants' side may be necessary. As indicated in the communication sent by the TSOs to the market participants in April 2009, the detailed formats of the new files to be used during phase 2 have been available on our website since April 2009.
More information on this is available in Chapter 7. IT Support for any questions related to the access to CASC-CWE’s IT system will be handled by CASC-CWE.

• The financial security system will be based on a pre-payment principle. This system will require the opening of a business bank account by CASC-CWE with each participant. This system will also require the signature of a specific contract focused on the management of the business bank account : the Participant Financial Agreement.

• On the Netherlands-Germany border, auctions between TenneT/transpower and TenneT/Amprion will stop and will be replaced by auctions between Netherlands/Germany.

• The nominated programs will be firm (physically or financially) on all the CWE borders.

• The “Use It Or Sell It” principle will be applied on all CWE borders.


Important : the capacity nomination/reservation process will still be handled by the TSOs.



7. New IT formats needed for phase 2 

CASC-CWE will provide an access to the CASC-CWE Explicit Auction system (EXAU), the web-based platform already used for phase 1 of the project, which will be upgraded in order to extend the services provided to the Market Participants.
The extension of the service is fully ENTSO-E compliant, and ENTSO-E XML documents can be uploaded or generated directly on the system by the Market Participant through the user interface.

The current ENTSO-E standard implemented for the Explicit Auctions are:

o ECAN v4r0
o ACK v5r0
o Code list

For more technical details concerning the ENTSO-E, please visit the ENTSO-E website.

8. Training for market participants

CASC-CWE will organize training sessions for the Market Participants in the months of September/October. It will be possible to have
• A training session in the CASC-CWE's premises in Luxembourg, and/or
• An on-line test auctions ("White auction")

These sessions will be mainly focused on the new functionalities corresponding to phase 2 of the project.


On the following dates, 1 day training sessions are planned at CASC-CWE's premises.

 
23rd September 2009
6th October 2009
Start time : 10:00 - End time : 17:00
The location of the training sessions in Luxembourg will be:
CASC-CWE
2 rue de Bitbourg
L-1273 Luxembourg Hamm



Market participants who wish to participate in a training session must complete this form and send it by e-mail to CASC-CWE. The physical training will be limited to 2 persons per company.

More details on the white auctions sessions will be given later.

An e-learning kit is also available. 

9. Contact information


For any clarification on this document, CASC –CWE and the present auction offices can be contacted:

CASC-CWE S.A
Tel.: +352 27 62 38 38
Fax: +352 27 61 66 05
Email : operations(at)casc-cwe.eu

www.casc-cwe.eu
2 rue de Bitbourg
L-1273 Luxembourg Hamm


RTE:
Service Grands Comptes
Réseau de Transport d'Electricité
Telephone number +33 (0)1.41.02.12.70 Fax number +33 (0)1.41.02.10.79


TSO Auction BV
Telephone number +31 26 373 13 06
Fax number +31 26 373 13 95
Email address information(at)tso-auction.org


Amprion GmbH
Systemführung Netze
Brauweiler
Planung Systemeinsatz
Von-Werth-Str. 274
50259 Pulheim

Frontoffice:
Tel.: +49 2234 85-3301
Fax: +49 2234 85-3300
Email address frontoffice(at)amprion.net