Public consultation on amendments to the general conditions for balancing services (T&C FCR, T&C aFRR, T&C mFRR), restoration services (T&C RSP), voltage and reactive power services (T&C VSP), and services related to congestion management (T&C OPA, T&C SA)

Context

Elia organises this official public consultation of market parties on amendments to the General Conditions that are included in the various Terms & Conditions in accordance with the concerned European network code.

The Terms & Conditions (T&C) in which these General Conditions are included are as follows:

• For balancing services¹ : Terms and conditions for manual frequency restoration service (“T&C mFRR”), automatic frequency restoration service (“T&C aFRR”), and frequency containment reserve service (“T&C FCR”);
• For restoration services² : Terms and conditions to act as Restoration Service Provider (“T&C RSP”) ;
• For voltage and reactive power services³ : Terms and Conditions for voltage and reactive power services (“T&C VSP”);
• For services related to congestion management⁴ : Terms and conditions for Outage Planning Agents (“T&C OPA”), and Scheduling Agents (“T&C SA”).

The General conditions include the provisions relating to invoicing, liability, confidentiality, review and dissolution, among other things. The amendments that are proposed to these General conditions include:

• The correction of typos, inconsistencies between the different language versions and inconsistencies between the various T&Cs;
• The correction of a footnote included on the wrong place;
• A simplification of Article I.6.4. on the caps;
• The addition of a clarification in Articles I.7.1 (emergency situations) and I.7.2 (alert, emergency, black-out and restoration state) that except if Elia notifies expressly otherwise and/or except in case of a provision of the applicable legislation and regulations stating otherwise, the Service Provider will continue to fulfill its obligations as foreseen under the Contract in this situation;
• A clarification in the examples of potential force majeure events;
• A precision on how a situation of force majeure must be notified to the other Party;
• A clarification in Article I.10.1 (review) of the termination possibilities in case of amendments to the Contract;
• The addition of an Article on GDPR.

It is reminded that given the nature of these General conditions, it had already been decided to keep them the same for all the above-mentioned services. Therefore, one public consultation is organised for these amendments to the General conditions of all T&Cs involved. These amendments to the General Conditions will enter into force for a concerned T&C once a new version of such T&C has been approved and enters into force.  

¹In application of article 18 of the Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 of 23 November 2017 establishing a guideline on electricity balancing

²In application of article 4 of the Regulation (EU) 2017/2196 establishing a network code on electricity emergency and restoration

³In application of article 234 of the Federal Grid Code of 22 April 2019

⁴In application of articles 46, 49 and 52 of the Regulation (EU) 2017/1485 of 2 August 2017 establishing a guideline on electricity transmission system operation and in application of articles 244 and 246 until 252 of the Federal Grid Code of 22 April 2019

Period

Elia invites all stakeholders to submit any comments and suggestions they may have related to these amendments only as submitted for consultation.

The consultation period runs from 12 November 2021 to 13 December 2021.

After the consultation period, Elia collects all comments and feedback from the market parties. Elia will analyse these comments and integrate them into a consultation report together with Elia’s responses. In addition to the consultation report, Elia will publish the reactions of the market parties (including names) on the website, unless it is explicitly stated that the contribution is to be considered confidential.

Reply form

Please use the online form to respond to this public consultation: