11/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - L'ENTSO-E moves regional electricity cooperation up a gear. Members of the European transport system (GRT) and electricity grid operators (ENTSO-E) signed an agreement on Thursday 10 December to boost cooperation among GRT. The agreement foresees that ENTSO-E members will participate in Regional Security Coordination Initiatives (RSCIs) or contract five essential services from them. The agreement also ensures that RSCIs will develop in a harmonised, interoperable and standardised manner. Following Coreso in Brussels, SSC near Cologne and TSC in Munich, two RSCI were set in South-East Europe in 2015, in Belgrade and Thessalonica. Other RSCI are expected to emerge shortly so that the whole of Europe is covered by the end of 2017. RSCIs are designed to offer at least five different types of service: common grid modelling, analysis of system security, coordination for outage planning, system adequacy forecasts and coordinated calculation of transmission capacity. (EH)