On 27th March 2001 the NETA (New Electricity Trading Arrangements) system came into force, designed to deliver competitive, market based trading arrangements for electricity whilst maintaining a secure and reliable electricity system. NETA became BETTA (British Electricity Trading Transmission Arrangements) in April 2005 covering the regions of England, Wales and Scotland.
As electricity is a unique product that cannot currently be stored in large amounts. Supply and demand for electricity must be matched, or balanced, at all times. In Britain this is primarily done by suppliers, generators, non-physical traders and customers trading in the competitive wholesale electricity market. Trading can take place bilaterally or on exchanges, and contracts for electricity can be struck over timescales ranging from several years ahead to on-the-day trading markets. Electricity can also be imported or exported through interconnectors. Currently there are electricity interconnectors between Britain and France, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Norway and Denmark.
Contracts can be agreed between Parties (over the counter contracts) or via an exchange e.g. EPEX or N2EX. Trading is conducted anonymously The exchange does not seek to hold a physical position, i.e. it will always try and match sales to purchases. Once bilateral contracts are agreed, they need to be notified to Elexon so these volumes can be factored into imbalance calculations. This process is either conducted by one of the Counterparties (provided they are an authorised Notification Agent to prevent fraud) or by the exchange. Several reports are provided to parties to enable them to reconcile their position with the Central Market.
Following gate closure for each Settlement Period, the Central Market will perform settlement calculations based on information from National Grid, metered volumes (for physical traders), registered data, contract notifications and market index data from exchanges. This determines how much each party owes or is owed. This data is provided to each Party by the Settlement Administration Agent (SAA) in the form of electronic files with further potential adjustments possible for a period of 14 months following each settlement period.
Genstar4 Traders satisfies all of the obligations of a Participant in the UK BETTA market for contract notification and settlements. This includes counterparty set up and notification agent registration, contract volume notifications (including net position notifications), acceptance and rejection acknowledgements and reports, forward contract reports and settlement flows and reconciliation.
The contract position can be visualised using Position Monitor which facilitate discrepancy management using the forward contract report as the basis for comparison as required by the market. Checking of Settlement report data against system-calculated values is performed automatically and a discrepancy report produced.
For asset operators, the traded position can be used as the basis for asset dispatch and adjusted as necessary by operational dynamics.
Genstar4 is fully compatible with ECVAA, SAA and other Elexon agent file formats and interacts with the Xsec encryption / decryption package to exchange data.
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Telephone: +44 (0)23 9431 7620
Email: info@enegen.co.uk