Balancing challenges in the gas system during the weekend 17-18 June 2023
During the weekend 17-18 June 2023 Energinet experienced different IT issues affecting on the balance of the gas system. Energinet have investigated the circumstances and would like to share the findings with Market participants.
On Saturday 17 June 2023 a software error occurred at the Everdrup compressor station, cutting the capacity at the Faxe border point and thereby reducing the flow to 0 (zero). This caused – correctly – the gas system to go long and into the upper yellow zone. As the balancing model prescribes a trade by the balancing area manager(BAM) was triggered.
However, an issue with an Energinet EIC code prevented the trade to be imported into Energinet’s back-end system, whereas the volume was not included into the accumulated system balance (ASB) calculation the following hour and likewise the trade price by the transmission system operator (TSO) was not published on Energinet Online.
Unfortunately, this was not detected, causing new trades to be triggered the following hours adding to the imbalance of the system.
Volumes traded by the TSO 17 June 2023 was only read into the back-end IT system on Sunday 18 June 2023, causing the system balance to move into a short position, decreasing each hour. By then the error was detected, the TSO did not trade in the yellow zone and an urgent market message (UMM) was published.
How will Energinet improve?
Market participants might ask what Energinet intent to do to prevent a situation like this from reoccurring. Energinet look at this event with great seriousness, as an error like this should not occur.
Energinet have narrowed down the circumstance to 2-3 individual IT errors combined with unfortunate human errors. Energinet are in dialogue with the external IT providers responsible for the IT systems affected to make sure that similar errors would be prevented.
Energinet is also looking into creating an even more resilient process to minimize the effect of human errors.
Balancing gas prices for 17 and 18 June 2023
Market participants have asked what the balancing gas prices for 17 and 18 June 2023 will be. Energinet will use the principles for neutralization of balancing gas charges for invoicing imbalances for the gas day 17 and 18 June 2023.
Although the TSO traded in the yellow zone on 17 June 2023 the volumes were not allocated to causers and the traded prices were not published during the gas day for the market to take measures to balance and will therefore not be used.
