Empower to carry out a study to provide guidelines to imbalance settlement period of 15 minutes transition timetable

The imbalance settlement period is the period by which the balance of the production and consumption of energy in the energy market is examined. Duration of this period is usually an hour. With renewable energy production increasing steadily, power generation varies more and more within one hour, depending for example on wind conditions and sunlight. For some EU countries, therefore, it has already been decided to shorten the imbalance settlement period to 15 minutes in order to enable the effective energy markets.

Finnish Energy Authority chose Empower to investigate the impact of the 15 minutes imbalance settlement period to the various actors in the electricity market and to create guidelines and timetable for the possible transition to the finer time resolution. The study is carried out in cooperation with Valor Partners.

– We chose Empower to carry out this study due their extensive practical market experience and industry know-how. Our aim is to help us (the Energy Authority) to evaluate potential problems and challenges and their impact on the implementation schedule for a 15-minute imbalance settlement period. We believe that Empower has good prerequisites to carry out this study, says Senior Engineer Ville Väre from Finnish Energy Authority.

The goal of going to 15 minute imbalance settlement period instead the current hour is to get a more accurate price of electricity for 15-minute periods, as it is assumed to guide energy consumption and offset consumption peaks. It is also expected to shape the future demand and supply of energy and to automate both of these companies are expected to invest in new technologies. With the help of information and automation, energy consumption can be shifted and reduced use during peaks.

– The new solutions will be automated, because the changes must be made quickly. To provide a simple example, we look at the hours between 6-7 am. Electricity consumption is very low for the first 45 minutes, but when every household makes coffee just before seven, this creates a consumption peak that determines the energy price for the whole hour. With the 15 minute imbalance settlement period, the price of energy consumption for the period of 6-6: 45 would be lower, says Jan Segerstam, Development Director, Empower.