Balance agreement
A balance provider can be a person who has entered into a balance agreement with a system operator in accordance with the procedure provided for in the Electricity Market Act and legislation established on the basis thereof to ensure their balance.
Under the balance agreement, the system operator is obligated to sell to the balance provider the amount of energy that is deficient in its balance area during the trading period and to purchase from the balance provider the amount of energy that is surplus during the trading period.
The balance provider assumes balance responsibility towards the market participants in its open supply chain. The balance provider is responsible for ensuring that the amount of electricity purchased and/or supplied to the network by market participants in its administrative area during the trading period and the amount of electricity sold and/or taken from the network by market participants during the same trading period are in balance.
Upon entering into a balance agreement, the balance provider submits to the system operator bank guarantees in accordance with the requirements set out in the Grid Code, which ensure that it will perform its obligations to the system operator unconditionally.
As an appendix to the balance agreement, Elering AS has established standard terms and conditions of the balance agreement, which are approved by the Competition Authority.
The standard terms and conditions of the balance agreement determine:
- the procedure for planning, managing and explaining the balance of the system operator and the balance provider;
- rights and obligations of the system operator and balance provider;
- guarantees.
Elering’s new standard terms and conditions of the electricity balance agreement have been approved by the Competition Authority’s decision no. 7-10/2024-022 (4 October 2024). Elering implements the new standard terms and conditions of the electricity balance agreement from 9 October 2024 at 12 p.m.
In the attachment below you will find the standard terms and conditions of the balance agreement and the basic form of the balance agreement.
For new balance providers
For new balance providers
The balance agreement does not permit:
- submission of an unbalanced balancing schedule. The balancing schedule to be submitted must be balanced across all trading periods included in the balancing schedule. The balancing schedule must be submitted for an entire trading day (a total of 96 trading periods);
- forecasting of balancing energy. The balance provider must keep its imbalance volumes within reasonable limits and use the open supply provided by the system operator only to cover unpredictable deviations arising in the balance provider's own portfolio.
The balance agreement enters into force at 12 a.m. at the start of the calendar month*, provided that the following prerequisites have been met:
1. Both parties have signed the balance agreement, including have provided each other with the names and contact details of the persons involved in the performance of the obligations set out in the balance agreement.
The basic form of the balance agreement and the standard terms and conditions of the balance agreement can be found here: https://elering.ee/bilansileping.
2. Both parties have successfully tested the processes related to data exchange**.
In particular, this concerns the submission of balancing schedules over the data exchange channel in a format acceptable to the system operator. The system administrator accepts balancing schedules in XML format via API (REST POST).
NB! Testing the data exchange takes a minimum of two weeks (14 calendar days), if not more. The system operator prepares a sample balancing schedule for the balance provider once the balance provider has submitted an overview of the balance provider’s portfolio to the system operator. When providing an overview, the balance provider bases its decision on the sub-clauses of section 7.1.1 of the standard terms and conditions of the balance agreement.
3. The balance provider has submitted to the system operator a bank guarantee from a bank acceptable to the latter or made a deposit to the system operator's bank account in the amount of 31,995 euros.
4. Both parties have signed a data warehouse usage agreement. The agreement form can be found here: https://elering.ee/andmevahetus#tab0.
5. The balance provider has submitted a notice of economic activity to the Register of Economic Activities in order to operate as an electricity supplier.
*In the Eastern European time zone: UTC +2 in winter, UTC+3 in summer