Today 11th of December in hotel Balkan, Sofia was held an official demonstration session of the Independent Bulgarian energy exchange (IBEX), which gave the start of the testing period of IBEX. The energy minister Petkova said that a real trading on the exchange with a day-ahead market should be expected during the second half of January 2016. Till now 17 companies have send applications for participation on IBEX and 13 of them have already been trained to work with the exchange platform. Market participants could trade quantities for every single hour during the day with a price step of 0.10 BGN/MWh and minimum and maximum price of -1000 BGN/MWh and +6000 BGN/MWh. The bids are send for every hour and the minimum offered quantity is 0.1 MWh.
The tenders will be held in Central European time (CET). The starting period for submitting bids is 2 weeks in advance and the end of the bidding session is at 12 CET in the day before the delivery day. Each bid made on the exchange could contain 64 pairs of price and quantities, which could be changed unlimited number of times before the end of the tender. The results from the tenders will be published every day on the webpage of IBEX.
The energy exchange starts only with hourly products and a couple of months later is planned to introduce block products for multiple hours as well as flexible products. IBEX takes the responsibility to develop an intraday market, which is expected to launch at the beginning of 2017. At the moment IBEX team are also developing a platform for trading of natural gas. It will be operational in the late 2016.
The event was attended by the chairman of Energy and water regulatory commission (EWRC), Mr. Ivan Ivanov, who assured that in the next two months EWRC will accredit the standard load profiles necessary for households and small businesses to enter the liberalized market. After the launch of IBEX, EWRC will have monitoring and control functions over the operations on the energy exchange.
The executive director of Bulgarian energy holding EAD (BEH) reminded that yesterday the European energy commission has accepted the engagements of the holding and will cancel the ongoing case “BEH Electricity”. “The exchange is an important part of this engagement. We are committed to provide sufficient liquidity and energy capacities on IBEX. The energy offered on IBEX will have a profile similar to the production capacities of NPP Kozloduy, TPP Maritsa East 2 and NEC. These national companies will participate on the exchange during the first 5 years.”
Klaus Dieter Borchardt, director of “Internal energy market” in Directorate General Energy at the European Commission pointed out that the launch of the energy exchange is very important signal that Bulgaria sends to EC. Borchardt underlined that the exchange is a mandatory tool, but not the only one for the complete liberalization of the energy market in Bulgaria. “I know that many people are concerned of the upcoming changes. We in the EC fully understand the concerns especially the ones of the household, because, if we let the market to act that will affect the prices”. At the beginning of the process the prices may raise but on the later stages they will reach its realistic levels that might be even lower than the currents ones. Borchardt announced that he and minister Petkova have agreed upon a working program for the first half of 2016 in order to determine the vulnerable consumers in Bulgaria and to provide them protection from eventual price peaks. “The development of an energy market is important for the economy but it should not compromise the consumers. The development of the energy market must be combined with measures for safeguarding the vulnerable customers.”, added Mr. Borchardt.
Source: 3e-news