Instead of market coupling and integration with existing European platforms local exchanges are being announced to be founded in Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria beside existing OPCOM exchange.
Electricity trading on a day-ahead level in SEE is organised over-the-counter. Few trading platforms exist in the region with very limited liquidity.
Fine-tuning of open electricity deals, selling of the energy surplus and coverage of the energy deficit, is concluded bilaterally. It is not only that this approach lacks in transparency, it also leads to a higher risk exposure for market participants.
he only successfully implemented regional project that is worth a mention is the 4M Market Coupling between Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Four markets have been coupled since the last quarter of 2014 and this could pave the way for other countries to join the process. With the establishment of a national market operator, Serbia is preparing a regional project called SEEPEX. The base is in co-operation with EPEX Spot, the power exchange which has trading hubs in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. In the second step, one could expect coupling of the Serbian electricity market with Romania and Hungary. In parallel, establishment of local power exchanges in Croatia and Bulgaria is on its way.
The Greek wholesale electricity market has been organised as a mandatory pool since 2005. The national regulatory body has announced several transitional short-term measures, which are necessary in order to ensure integration of the Greek electricity market into the European wholesale electricity market. The actual coupling should take place by the end of 2015. Specifically, the centralised unit-commitment-based market model needs to be compatible with the PCR (Price Coupling of Regions) concept, on which the Italian market has been connected since the end of February 2015. A high-voltage DC cable between Greece and Italy should be coupled with the Multi-Regional Coupling (MRC) in the next step. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the current market mechanism in Greece, although much more complex than MRC, provide more optimal solutions from a system perspective, as it cooptimises day-ahead offers and ancillary system services and delivers location price signals for scarce transmission capacities. , transmits Serbia-energy.eu
