Croatia day-ahead electricity exchange delayed to Q1 ‘15

The launch of Croatia’s day-ahead electricity exchange CROPEX has been pushed back to the first quarter of next year, a representative of the company told ICIS on Thursday.

The exchange was previously expected to start in the fourth quarter of this year ( see EDEM 19 June 2014 ).

An operational platform is a pre-condition for Croatia to join one of the European market coupling initiatives – without one, it has no market to couple.

The country finds itself sandwiched between two separate coupled market areas: to the west is the Italian-Slovenian zone, while to the northeast is the CEE market coupling project, made up of Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary with Romania soon to join.

CROPEX was established by the Croatian Transmission System Operator (HOPS) and the Croatian Energy Market Operator (HROTE) as a joint venture in May. “At the moment we are working on the implementation of the DAM [day-ahead market] in Croatia [including] trading platform, a clearing solution, and a cross-border coupling solution, and we are expecting CROPEX to be launched, instead of by the end of 2014 as intended, in the first quarter of 2015,” the representative said.

The company is planning to reveal more detailed information about the launch date within the next four weeks.

CROPEX will now be racing against the Serbian equivalent SEEPEX which is also set to launch in Q1 ’15 ( see EDEM 20 June 2014 ).

Serbian transmission system and market operator Elektromreza Srbije (EMS) and European exchange EPEX SPOT are shareholders in the project. The SEEPEX exchange should be established as a company by November.

The project is on course for its intended launch date, an EPEX SPOT spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

“We will provide further information on the project at a later date,” he added. Bulgaria is also expected to launch its own day-ahead exchange but any potential launch date is unclear ( see EDEM 12 June 2014 ). Irina Peltegova and Ellie Chambers