EU energy regulatory agency ACER is to decide on coordinated electricity capacity calculation regions after national regulators failed to agree on them, ACER said late Wednesday.
"The responsible national regulatory authorities [told ACER] that, despite their best efforts, they could not reach a unanimous decision on the common proposal for capacity calculation regions developed by transmission system operators," ACER said.
All the EU's electricity TSOs submitted this common proposal last November to all the EU's national regulators for approval, as required by the EU's binding capacity allocation and congestion management network code.
The code requires all TSOs in the same capacity calculation region to use the same method for calculating capacity.
The national regulators' failure to agree means the decision passes to ACER, which is now seeking views on specific issues until July 20.
These include whether the commitment made by the central-west and central-east European TSOs in March to merge their capacity calculation regions in the future is enough, or if the merged region should be specifically included in the approved list of regions.
The CWE region includes Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
The CEE region includes Austria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
ACER is also asking if the CEE or merged CWE-CEE region should include bidding zone borders between Germany/Luxembourg and Austria, between Croatia and Slovenia, between Croatia and Hungary, and between Romania and Hungary.
ACER also wants views on how the capacity calculation regions could develop geographically over time, and if there are any new elements to consider since formal EU power TSO body Entso-e consulted on the regions last September.
The TSOs proposed 11 capacity calculation regions, including separate CWE and CEE regions.
The others are Baltic, Channel (France, Great Britain, the Netherlands), Greece-Italy, Hansa (Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, Sweden), Ireland and the UK, Italy North, Nordic, southeast Europe and southwest Europe.
