Bulgaria and Macedonia plan to couple day-ahead electricity markets

Bulgaria and Macedonia are considering coupling their day-ahead electricity markets, the chief executive of Bulgarian exchange IBEX told ICIS on Monday.

Representatives of the Macedonian grid operator and energy regulator recently met with their Bulgarian counterparts and IBEX to discuss the possibility of market coupling.

Macedonia does not have an exchange of its own but as a contracting party of the Energy Community it has made commitments to couple its spot market with at least one neighbour by mid-2018. This would mean that Macedonia will most likely use IBEX’s platform instead of opening its own separate exchange.

IBEX is hoping to sign a preliminary contract for cooperation with Macedonia by the beginning of February, Konstantinov said. The contract would set out more concrete steps and deadlines for potential future coupling.

Bulgaria is also expected to join the 4M market coupling initiative of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania by 2020 (see EDEM 15 November 2016).

Forward platform

Meanwhile, IBEX’s recently launched screen for continuous forward electricity trading is yet to register its first deal (see EDEM 8 December 2016).

The exchange is still working on ensuring that the state-owned producer offers significant volume on this screen in order to create liquidity, Konstantinov said. Ii addition, final market making contracts are yet to be signed due to last minute issues.

Meanwhile, more and more trading companies have finalised their counterparty agreements to trade on the screen, Konstantinov added.

He expected that trading will probably start after the ongoing winter supply crisis is over. On Friday Bulgaria imposed an electricity export ban due to record weather-related demand which led to supply shortages on the internal regulated market (see EDEM 11 January 2017). It is currently unclear when the ban will be lifted.

Finally, IBEX is working on launching an intra-day platform in the second half of this year. irina.peltegova@icis.com