ACER monitors the effective implementation of the Gas Balancing Network Code and shares its findings in dedicated reports. Most reports used an enhanced review of the country assessments for all or a large subset of balancing zones, focusing on key features of the balancing design.
What are the main findings?
Some Member States missed the Code's five-year implementation deadline because of structural market limitations, the absence of proper implementation plans, and a late delivery. While many countries terminated their interim measures, a relevant number of balancing zones continued using them.
What does ACER say?
ACER recommends designing transparent and well-structured implementation processes, which should follow and adapt to the main market developments. Careful regulatory scrutiny is advisable when different tools, other than short-term standardised products, are used. National regulatory authorities should monitor the neutrality of cash-flows and gas accounting, as well as an appropriate release of system information.
What is the Balancing Analytical Framework and how it can serve monitoring?
The Balancing Analytical Framework builds on analysing neutrality as a key indicator to understand robust gas accounting and wider regime performance. The Balancing Analytical Framework serves as a quantitative comparison tool, to quantify whether the role of the TSO is residual in balancing or whether network users play an active role, while shedding light on imbalance price differences and neutrality accounting. The framework facilitates comparisons between various balancing regimes in the European Union. The data used in the analysis was provided by ENTSOG and complemented and validated by the Agency.
Workshops
To facilitate the discussion and sharing of best practices on the Code's implementation, a series of workshops was organised. These debates included inputs from the Agency, ENTSOG and representatives of the network user community.
