Electricity & Gas Balancing Group Management
Management of your balancing group - secure & individual
Your balancing group for electricity or gas - always balanced
Keeping your balancing group constantly in balance and in accordance with all guidelines and obligations is a complex task. The technical and professional requirements are high and demand a lot of personnel and know-how. Do you want to play it safe and outsource your balancing group management for electricity or gas?
With our wide range of services for balancing group management for electricity and gas, you've come to the right place. We take on tasks exactly according to your wishes - so that your balancing groups for electricity and gas are always balanced.
What does balancing group management for electricity and gas offer you?
On request, we can take over individual or individually combined energy data management tasks associated with the administration and management of your electricity and/or gas balancing group. This allows you to concentrate on your core tasks and benefit from efficient processes. Via Vattenfall, communication with network operators or market area managers (MAMs) and trading partners is guaranteed around the clock.
We can support you in balancing group management with the following services:
Balancing group management
- Establishment of balancing groups for electricity and gas - we will be glad to assist you in concluding balancing group contracts
- Acceptance of forecasts for energy supply
- Position monitoring
- Schedule nomination and renomination
- Registration of all transactions within the scope of balancing group management electricity and gas
- Schedule nomination of third party quantities
- Europe-wide nomination for the markets Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Netherlands, Slovakia for electricity and gas as well as additionally Slovenia for electricity and Poland for gas
- 24/7 Operations
Balancing your balancing group
at the day-ahead and intraday auction for electricity as well as at the continuous spot or intraday market.
Communication in accordance with the "Market Rules for the Execution of Electricity Balancing Group Settlement" (MaBiS)
- Energy data management
- Data exchange with market partners (e.g. provision of balancing-relevant time series to the market partners; receipt, verification and confirmation of settlement total time series from TSO/MGV)
Who benefits from balancing group management for electricity and gas?
All market participants who manage or wish to set up their own balancing group can use Vattenfall's services to place tasks in competent hands and simplify their processes.
Services and advantages at a glance
- Balancing group management: setting up the balancing groups, registration of all transactions.
- Schedule nomination and renomination: forecasts, creation of standardised schedules, timely nomination to the TSO or MGV, schedule nomination of third-party volumes
- Closing of open balancing group positions in the day-ahead and intraday market
- Communication according to MaBiS: Energy data management, data exchange with market partners.
- 24/7 availability vis-à-vis the TSO or MGV and the trading partners
- Reduction of balancing energy costs
- Efficient processes through direct settlement via Vattenfall
<span class="h3">Wussten Sie schon?</span>
A balancing group is a virtual energy volume account for electricity and gas. The balancing group provides the link between the virtual world of electricity and gas trading and the physical world of energy supply and grid stability. A balancing group ensures that only energy that has been produced or extracted is sold or delivered.
Trading transactions in wholesale with physical fulfillment are represented as schedule deliveries between different balancing groups and transmitted to the network operator. There are special exchange balancing groups for the settlement of transactions on the spot market.
A control area is an interconnection of high-voltage and extra-high-voltage grids. Since 2012, Germany has been divided into the four control areas of TenneT, 50Hertz, Amprion and Transnet BW. The transmission system operators (TSOs) are responsible for ensuring a frequency around 50 Hertz in their control areas and for compensating for over- or under-coverage with control energy.
The control areas are interconnected via numerous interconnection points through which the electricity produced in Germany and its neighboring countries permanently flows.
The term balancing energy refers to the financial settlement of balancing energy. In order to ensure the stability of the power grid, every producer and every commercial consumer must forecast their generated or consumed electricity quantities for the following day and report them to the transmission system operator with quarter-hour accuracy. These forecasts are also called schedules or profiles. If there is then a surplus or shortfall, this is balanced by a physical delivery with balancing energy and settled with financial balancing energy.
Payment for balancing energy is due both in the event of underproduction and overproduction. The electricity quantities fed in too little or too much are also called shortfalls and surpluses.
There are around 900 balancing groups in Germany. They are managed by a balancing group manager, which is often a municipal utility, for example. The balancing group manager must ensure that the balance between electricity feed-in and electricity withdrawal is equalised so that the grid remains stable. At the level of the extra-high voltage grids - the transmission grid - we speak of control zones. There are four control areas in Germany, which are operated by the transmission system operators TenneT, Amprion, 50Hertz and TransnetBW.
The market rules for the implementation of balancing group billing for electricity are also referred to as MaBiS for short. The Federal Network Agency introduced them in order to standardise all business processes and market communication associated with balancing group billing. This includes, for example, deadlines and formats for the exchange of data. All market participants must implement these specifications in a binding manner. EDIFACT messages are used under MaBiS.
