Public Consultation on the Terms and Conditions for the Outage Planning Agent (T&C OPA), Terms and Conditions for the Scheduling Agent (T&C SA) and the Rules for Coordination and Congestion Management in the framework of the phase 1 of iCAROS project as well as the planning of the implementation of the scope of iCAROS phase 2

Context

In the framework of the iCAROS (integrated Coordination of Assets for Redispatching and Operational Security) project, Elia intends to develop efficient and modern processes for the coordination of system relevant assets of grid users and for congestion management in a fast evolving electricity market in order to ensure grid security and compliancy with the applicable legislation (in particular with the requirements from the European regulation System Operation Guidelines – SOGL and of the national regulation Code of Conduct). These processes are necessary for a safe management of the grid by contributing to the mitigation of congestions on the grid, the follow-up of the availability of ancillary services, the monitoring of the availability of power production means to satisfy the demand and the safeguarding of the operational security. In particular, the evolutions foreseen in the iCAROS project concern the following processes:

1. The Outage planning process ensured by the Outage Planning Agent (OPA) pursuant to articles 92 of the SOGL and 125 and 126 of the Code of Conduct. This process corresponds to the provision of availability plans necessary for the efficient coordination of system relevant assets of grid users and the planning of outages of Elia grid assets.
2. The Scheduling process ensured by the Scheduling Agent (SA) pursuant to articles 49 of the SOGL and 128 and 129 of the Code of Conduct. This process concerns the provision of daily active power schedules from day-ahead necessary for the coordination of system relevant assets of grid users and provides a necessary input for the assessment of congestion risks on the grid.
3. The Redispatching process (costly remedial actions) ensured by the Scheduling Agent (SA) pursuant to articles 130 and 131 of the Code of Conduct. This process concerns the provision and the activation of flexibility (active power upwards and downwards) offered by the SA as a mean to solve operational security issues on the grid.
4. The congestion management process ensured by Elia pursuant to SOGL and CACM requirements (CACM - Regulation on Capacity Allocation and Congestion Management).  The introduction of a new Congestion Risk Indicator allowing to better represent the congestion risk in the different Belgian electrical zones contributes to the improvement of this process.

The evolutions of these processes were first described in three design notes  published and consulted in 2017. Following discussions and agreements with market parties, the implementation of the iCAROS design has been split in different phases reflecting the operational prioritization. The first phase (topic of the current public consultation) ensures the inclusion of all features required to allow a split of mFRR free bids and redispatching bids while ensuring operational excellence. After the setting of the scope of the first phase, aligned with market parties, the focus was on the design, relevant for this first phase, which was fine-tuned during several fine-tuning workshops between Elia and the market parties. An overview of the fine-tuned iCAROS design for this first phase is available on the Elia website ² .
The documents subject to consultation constitute updated versions of the Terms and Conditions for the Outage Planning Agent (T&C OPA), the Terms and Conditions for the Scheduling Agent (T&C SA) and the Rules for Coordination and Congestion Management that integrate the evolutions foreseen in the phase 1 of the iCAROS project. Part I General Conditions of T&C OPA and T&C SA was the subject of a public consultation in November 2021, common to all ancillary and system services, and was approved by CREG in March 2023. Consequently, they are not part of this public consultation. The initial planning and content of the next phase of the iCAROS project (phase 2) is detailed in a separate document that is also part of this public consultation and for which comments of market parties regarding the feasibility of the timeline and content are collected.

Period

Elia invites all stakeholders to submit any comments and suggestions they may have on the documents submitted for consultation.

The consultation period runs from 6 June 2023 to 25 August 2023.

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 and if needed adapt the T&C OPA, T&C SA and the Rules for Coordination and Congestion Management. 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. The comments of market parties regarding the feasibility of the timeline and content of phase 2 will be discussed in WG Balancing.