EB GL (Regulation 2017-2195)

Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 of 23 November 2017 establishing a guideline on electricity balancing (EB GL)

Consolidated version through 19 June 2022 (incorporating amendments M1: Regulation 2021/280 and M2: Regulation 2022/828). Swedish language translation (CELEX_3A02017R2195-20220619_3ASV_3ATXT). Document is informational only — the authentic versions are published in the EU Official Journal.

Full title: Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 on guidelines for electricity balancing

Short name: EB GL (Electricity Balancing Guideline)

Official Journal: OJ L 312, 28.11.2017

Consolidated: 2022-06-19 (through M2 Regulation 2022/828)

Language: Swedish (translation)

Scope: All EU transmission systems and interconnections; applies to TSOs, DSOs (incl. closed systems), NRAs, ACER, ENTSO-E, third parties, other market actors

Structure overview

Purpose and relevance

The EB GL is the foundational EU regulation for electricity balancing markets. It establishes:

1. BSP (Balance Service Provider) role — the entity providing balancing services, may aggregate demand, generation, and storage across BRP portfolios
2. BRP (Balance Responsible Party) role — financial responsibility for real-time imbalances
3. National terms obligation (Art. 18) — each TSO must develop national terms for BSPs and BRPs, approved by the NRA
4. European balancing platforms — mandatory shared platforms for FRR and RR balancing energy exchange
5. Standard products — harmonized product definitions for cross-border balancing service exchange
6. 15-minute imbalance settlement (Art. 53) — mandatory for all TSOs
7. Demand response and aggregation rights (Art. 3.1.f) — demand flexibility and aggregated resources must compete on equal terms with generation

In the Swedish context, this regulation is most often referenced for its BSP role requirement — specifically Svk’s failure to implement a functional BSP role. Note: the “December 2020” date commonly cited for this in market discussion is not itself a deadline stated in Art. 18 — see the correction under Article 18 below.

Key provisions

Article 3 — Purpose and supervisory aspects

Art. 3.1.f (demand flexibility mandate): The regulation shall “facilitate participation of demand response, including aggregation of facilities and energy storage, and ensure they compete with other balancing services on equal terms and, where necessary, act independently when serving a single consumption facility.” This is the primary EU legal basis for demand-side equal treatment in balancing markets.

Art. 3.1.g: Facilitate participation of renewable energy sources.

Article 15 — TSO-DSO cooperation

TSOs must cooperate with DSOs on information needed for imbalance calculation (Art. 15.2). DSOs must report congestion limits that impact balancing (Art. 15.4, cross-referencing SO GL Art. 182). When drafting national balancing terms, TSOs must coordinate with affected DSOs (Art. 18.3.a).

Articles 16–17 — BSP and BRP roles

Art. 16 — BSP role: The BSP must submit capacity and energy bids covering units/groups in one or multiple BRP portfolios. No discrimination between different bid types. All units providing reserves must belong to the same planning area as their corresponding BRPs (Art. 16.8). Capacity may be transferred between BSPs (Art. 16.3).

Art. 17 — BRP role: BRPs must strive to maintain real-time balance in their electricity area. Financially liable for imbalances settled with the TSO. May modify timetables before intraday capacity allocation deadline.

Article 18 — National terms obligation (the BSP implementation article)

Art. 18 requires each TSO, within six months of the regulation’s entry into force (Art. 18.1 — not 12 months, and this is a deadline to submit a proposal, not to have terms in force), to draft national terms for BSPs and for BRPs. The regulation entered into force 20 days after its 28.11.2017 OJ publication, i.e. 18 December 2017, putting the Art. 18.1 proposal deadline at roughly June 2018 — well before the “December 2020” date commonly cited for Sweden’s BSP terms. That later date does not appear in Art. 18 itself; it reflects how long the actual NRA approval process (Art. 4–5) took in Sweden, not a deadline the regulation sets. Any wiki page citing “the December 2020 Art. 18 deadline” is describing Sweden’s approval history, not a textual EB GL requirement — cite Source - Svk Artikel 18 Villkor Balansering (2024) or Ei’s approval decision for that date, not this regulation.

BSP terms and BRP terms are governed by separate paragraphs, each with its own item list — they are not one combined a–f list:

Art. 18.5 — content required in the BSP terms (11 items, a–k): includes prequalification rules (18.5.a, referencing Art. 16), balancing-capacity procurement/transfer rules (18.5.b), rules and conditions for aggregation of consumption facilities, storage, and generation units in a scheduling area to become a BSP (18.5.c) — the direct obligation requiring workable cross-BRP aggregation — data/information requirements to the connecting TSO/DSO (18.5.d), bid-to-BRP allocation rules (18.5.e), further data requirements for evaluating balancing provisions (18.5.f), product location definitions (18.5.g), balancing-energy volume settlement rules (18.5.h), settlement rules per Title V (18.5.i), a maximum settlement completion period (18.5.j), and consequences of non-compliance (18.5.k).

Art. 18.6 — content required in the BRP terms (12 items, a–l): includes the definition of balance responsibility (18.6.a), requirements to become a BRP (18.6.b), the requirement that BRPs are financially liable for imbalances (18.6.c), data requirements (18.6.d), rules for amending schedules before/after the intraday cross-zonal gate closure per Art. 17.3–17.4 (18.6.e), settlement rules (18.6.f–18.6.l).

The general aggregation-enabling mandate that BSP terms must satisfy sits in Art. 18.4.b (“shall enable an aggregation of demand facilities, energy storage facilities and power-generating facilities in one scheduling area to offer balancing services, subject to the conditions referred to in point 5(c)”) — not Art. 18.4.c, which instead requires the terms to let owners of demand facilities, third parties, and generation/storage owners become BSPs.

The terms are subject to NRA approval (Art. 4.1, Art. 5). TSOs must coordinate with affected TSOs/DSOs during drafting (Art. 18.3.a). Svenska kraftnät‘s 2024 implementation (see Source - Svk Artikel 18 Villkor Balansering (2024)) is described by market actors as a “paper construction” — formally compliant but without the operational infrastructure for workable cross-BRP aggregation.

Articles 19–23 — European balancing platforms

Three mandatory European platforms:

• Replacement Reserves (RR) platform — Art. 19
• mFRR energy exchange platform — Art. 20
• aFRR energy exchange platform — Art. 21

All TSOs must participate. Enables cross-border balancing service trading. BSPs can offer services to TSOs in other planning areas via the TSO-TSO model (Art. 21.1.g).

Articles 25–30 — Standard products, activation, pricing

Art. 25–27 — Pricing:

• FCR energy: up-regulation priced at up-reg price; FCR-D activation not separately compensated
• aFRR energy: direction-dependent pricing (up-reg or down-reg price)
• mFRR energy: highest/lowest activation price ± 3 EUR/MWh; if none, day-ahead price ± 3 EUR/MWh

Art. 26 — Marginal pricing for aFRR: TSOs may use pay-as-cleared (marginal) or pay-as-bid; harmonization toward marginal pricing is the EU direction.

Art. 28–29 — Activation: Both scheduled activations (ahead-of-time) and direct activations are permitted for mFRR. Minimum volumes and timing rules to be set in national terms.

Article 53 — 15-minute imbalance settlement

Mandatory: all TSOs in all planning areas must implement 15-minute imbalance settlement periods. Deadline: three years from entry into force (18 December 2017) — i.e., by 18 December 2020. Sweden’s 15-minute settlement is confirmed in Svk’s Art. 18 terms (Art. 4). This enables more granular price signals for flexible resources and accurate settlement of short DR activations.

Articles 44–55 — Imbalance settlement

BRP settlement (Art. 54): Imbalance = final position − allocated volume − imbalance adjustments. BRPs receive (or pay) the imbalance settlement price based on:

• VoAA (Value of Avoided Activation) — the average of cheapest available up-reg and most expensive available down-reg mFRR bids
• Incentive component — difference between day-ahead price and VoAA; ensures imbalance price ≈ day-ahead price when no activation occurs
• Balance reference price — VoAA + incentive component; applies when dominant direction is neutral

Aggregation and demand-side participation

The EB GL contains the EU’s explicit aggregation mandate for balancing markets. Key provisions:

The regulation is technology-neutral: generation, demand, and storage are explicitly equivalent for balancing service provision. A BSP acting as an aggregator earns revenue; affected BRPs are compensated separately (a compensation mechanism that Sweden has not yet fully implemented — see Aggregation and Elmarknadshubb).

Relationship to other regulations

Relevance to wiki topics

• Balancing Markets: EB GL is the primary legal basis for the Nordic FCR/aFRR/mFRR market structure; 15-minute settlement and marginal pricing derive from it
• Aggregation: Art. 3.1.f and 18.5.c are the EU legal basis for cross-BRP aggregation rights; the gap between this mandate and Svk’s implementation is the BSP problem
• Svenska kraftnät: Svk is directly bound by Art. 18; the 2024 terms document is its current (contested) implementation
• Elmarknadshubb: The centralt datahanteringsverktyg is the infrastructure prerequisite for the aggregation compensation mechanism required implicitly by Art. 18.5.c