EU energy regulatory agency ACER has published a scoping document outlining what could be included in its first operational and technical EU framework guidelines for gas.
"The framework guidelines on interoperability rules for European gas transmission networks aim at improving the inter-operation of the gas systems in the EU," ACER said in a note on its website Thursday.
"One overall aim of interoperability is to ensure that users of transmission systems in Europe do not face any additional technical, commercial or operational barriers compared with if the relevant networks were efficiently operated by a single entity," the scoping document says.
The scoping document includes a draft definition of gas interoperability as "the ability of diverse transmission systems to work together (inter-operate) in a technical system operational sense in order to facilitate the exchange of gas across networks."
This ability should take into account organizational differences between systems, and include simple and reliable information exchange among system operators and with system users, the document says.
ACER is holding a workshop to discuss the document at its headquarters in Ljubljana, Slovenia on September 13, and is encouraging comments before then. The final deadline for comments is September 19.
Interoperability is fundamental to achieving an integrated and competitive European gas market, the document says. This is a key EU policy -- EU leaders committed in February to completing the internal EU gas and power markets by 2014.
"The procedures of the operational and technical domain can strongly influence and even hamper the development of markets. To ensure and maintain system integrity and the continuity of supply, system operators do not only have to invest in infrastructure, but also have to focus on operational and interconnection agreements," the document says.
ACER's framework guidelines form part of the process of developing detailed EU-wide gas and power network codes for the first time, as laid out in the EU's third package of energy market reforms that took effect on March 3.
ACER has so far submitted three final EU framework guidelines to the European Commission, on gas capacity allocation mechanisms, power capacity allocation and congestion management, and power grid connections.
All three "were of a general policy nature," says ACER's scoping document, leaving the detailed rules and specifications to be developed by the EU's gas and power system operators in the EU network codes.
The gas interoperability framework guidelines will be the first focused on operational and technical issues, and the scoping exercise will help determine how to approach these more specific guidelines, the document says.
