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Issue title:

Gaspool Dispatching

Publication date:
05.09.2017
In this issue:

The summer break is over! Has there been a silly season? Looking at the current edition I would say, no! In particular in July there had been some excitement. Much of this was caused by developments around Nord Stream 2 and the utilisation of OPAL capacity. In this edition I explain the US sanctions against companies that participate in Russian export energy pipelines, and the court decisions on the OPAL utilisation.

In this edition there is – as it happens from time to time – a lot on transportation and regulation. It starts with the topic of the month, an interview about five years of Gaspool dispatching. What I personally found fascinating are the insights into system-control energy management that Heiko Bock from Gaspool, and Andreas Wieting from Gasunie Deutschland provide. This should allow shippers to draw their conclusions about the future development of imbalance prices and system-control energy prices. A topic that has been bothering me for months is virtual interconnection points (VIP). In spring over lunch, someone told me that this is a topic that causes huge discussions among TSOs. Some brief discussions over a coffee or a beer at the sidelines of some events have confirmed that this is indeed the case. During the summer I had the opportunity to discuss the issue in more detail with representatives from a number of TSOs. All these discussions were strictly informal and can’t be directly quoted. Therefore, the article is published in the market rumours section. The topic may contribute to changes in the German TSO landscape.

Topic of the Month: Gaspool dispatching

Heiko Bock is the senior manager responsible for dispatching in Gaspool. And it was five years ago that Andreas Wieting, now GUD’s head of Networks Operations, handed the dispatching over to Gaspool. ener|gate Gasmarkt talked to both of them about the experiences with the dispatching within Gaspool.

ener|gate Gasmarkt: How has dispatching developed over the last five years?

Mr Wieting: How did it all start? With the launch of Aequamus and Gaspool, we developed within Gasunie Deutschland a system control energy unit in 2008/2009.

ener|gate Gasmarkt: Aequamus, the joint L-gas market area of the north German TSOs…

Mr Wieting: At that time we bought and sold system- control energy only day-ahead. For the withinday management we only used flexibility products.

Framework conditionsFuture of the energy market

The electoral term is almost over. The current energy discussions are no longer dominated by concrete action but by strategic proposals for the next government. The big disadvantage: Of course, nobody knows which parties will form the next government, but CDU/CSU will most certainly be among them. But the energy and climate policy of a government of CDU/CSU with the liberal party, FDP, will be different from the policy of a “black” (CDU/CSU) and “green” (Green Party) coalition or a “Jamaica” coalition (black, green, yellow – for the Liberals). Even a continuation of the “grand” coalition is feasible. But what are the key proposals for any new government and what are the roles of natural gas and renewable gas in these proposals? At the end of June, the Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi) itself published a conclusion paper “Power 2030, Long-term trends – Tasks for the coming years”. One major task is an adjustment of the system of duties and taxes to relieve electricity and strengthen the burden on fossil fuels. This, the paper argues, is the prerequisite for a larger role of power in the heating and mobility sector, hence the concept of sector coupling. ener|gate Gasmarkt has repeatedly pointed out the major importance this adjustment of the distribution of burdens from tax and duties plays in the current energy discussion. But concrete proposals are still missing. This is also true for the latest BMWi paper.