On Wednesday 3 July, the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) highlighted, in its 2024 market monitoring report on capacity for cross-border electricity trading and congestion management, the urgent need for transmission system operators (TSOs) to make 70% of transmission capacity available for cross-border electricity trading by the end of 2025.
The main findings reveal that the EU power grid is becoming increasingly congested, with the cost of managing this congestion reaching €4 billion in 2023.
Some TSOs only made available, on average, 30% to 50% of the physical capacity of certain network elements in 2023, far from the 70% target.
What’s more, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre predicts that congestion will worsen in the years to come, even in an optimistic grid development scenario.
To meet the 70% requirement, ACER is calling for a unified approach between Member States.
TSOs must implement coordinated processes to first calculate capacity and then manage congestion.
They must also undertake targeted grid developments and improve the configuration of bidding zones so that bidding zone boundaries are better aligned with where structural grid congestion occurs.
To see the ACER report: https://aeur.eu/f/cyh (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)