Retail Energy Market

EASE has responded to the Public Consultation of DG Energy on the Retail Energy Market.

Highlights

Future retail energy markets should take into consideration the following principles:

• goals of increased empowerment of the consumer in a competitive, sustainable and secure energy system should be primarily attained through instruments designed in a market oriented, non-discriminating and technology-neutral manner;
• In particular:
  • energy storage constitutes a special and important asset of the complete energy value chain. Therefore the current and future levy structure should not hinder the integration of energy storage;
  • the use of energy storage must be technologically neutral: each case must adopt the most suitable technological and economic solution. Therefore any wording in this regards must be open and not technically discriminatory;
  • the main challenge is related to the value of energy storage, being it monetary or socio-economic, as it can deliver a number of strategic services both to the regulated and to the deregulated parts of the power industry. Therefore the operator of such devices may differ;
  • energy storage will play an important role in new market designs, especially with regards to flexibility markets;
  • specific storage regulation and market mechanisms for flexibility in combination with a new market design will help to create energy storage markets and will contribute to the development of a competitive energy storage industry in Europe.

EASE therefore calls for:

• a non-discriminatory consideration of and a fair treatment for energy storage alongside other measures, such as demand side management and the increase of interconnection capacity, when considering possible solutions for enhanced grid flexibility, stability and quality;
• a market design that allows specialised energy storage operators to emerge, as long as this does not trigger market distortion.