The CRE has validated RTE’s requests for derogation regarding the minimum 70% capacity requirement for cross zonal trades from 1 January 2020 following the entry into force of the Clean Energy Package.

The EU Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 June 2019 on the internal market for electricity (the Clean energy for all Europeans package) entered into force on 5 July 2019. It specifically lays down the rules to ensure the proper operation of the internal market in electricity. In particular, it provides that from 1 January 2020 transmission system operators must provide market participants with at least 70% of the transmission capacity for cross-border trades. Furthermore, ACER published recommendations on 8 August 2019 with regards to the implementation of this measure, specifically the respect of this 70% threshold for each timestamp.

Article 15 of the Regulation provides for the possibility for a Member State to prepare an action plan if it is not able to meet this 70% threshold due to structural congestions. As the French transmission system has no structural congestions, France has not implemented such a plan of actions. Indeed, studies carried out under the ten-year network development plan published by RTE and submitted to the CRE for approval on 17 September 2019 shows that under all the scenarios studied, over the period 2021-2025 the costs of congestion, redispatching or curtailment of renewable energy generation (in the order of 10 million Euros per year) will not increase significantly on the 220 and 400 kV RTE networks.

The regulation also provides the possibility of a derogation for transmission system operators from the 70% threshold within a capacity calculation region if they believe that in the context of its immediate application the operational security cannot be maintained for foreseeable grounds.

Due to the extremely short time period between the entry into force of the regulation on the internal market in electricity and the 1 January 2020, RTE has requested derogations from the CRE out of precaution and for the following reasons to allow for a gradual phase in of this criterion:

• RTE still does not have a detailed picture of the expression of the capacities available in light of the precise calculation methodology for this 70% threshold for each region, taking into account the different seasons and operational conditions, nor on the effective availability of remedial actions in specific situations where this threshold would not be met.
• RTE still needs to equip itself with the proper tools in order to implement, where relevant, a significant amount of remedial actions while guaranteeing operational security.

In this context, RTE has submitted three derogation requests to the CRE:

1. For the North Italian borders capacity calculation region: the derogation for a period of one year is to guarantee compliance with the 70% threshold for at least 70% of the time
2. For the South West Europe capacity calculation region: the derogation for a period of one year is to guarantee compliance with the 70% threshold for at least 70% of the time.
3. For the Core capacity calculation region (specifically covering the perimeter of the historical Central-Western Europe region): the derogation, for a duration of 6 months, is to continue to ensure the current minimum threshold of available capacity for cross-zonal exchanges of 20% (20% minRAM).

In practice, RTE does not expect any changes with regards to cross-border exchanges levels on 1 January 2020.

RTE will perform a parallel run in order to accurately assess the number of times this 70% criterion will not be met, as well as the potential impact on the operational security of guaranteeing it through remedial measures in situations where it would not normally be. If values above those commonly available were to be implemented operationally in the course of the year 2020, the impacts on cross-zonal trades will be shared with market participants at the European level sufficiently ahead of time.

Finally, RTE specifies that it could make new requests for derogation to the CRE if the above reasons have not been resolved as a result of the derogations in place.

The derogation requests submitted by RTE have all been the subject of a consultation with all of the regulators of the regions concerned and did not bring about any comments or opposition.

The CRE thus approved these requests for derogations in its deliberation of 12 December 2019.

The 3 derogations validated by the CRE are provided by RTE at the following link for Core, North Italian borders and South West Europe regions

20 december 2019