Bulgarian independent energy exchange (IBEX) is planned to start operation on 8th of December 2015. This was announced on the press conference by the CEO of IBEX Konstantin Konstantinov during the workshop on “Bulgarian energy exchange – what, how and when?” The date for launching of IBEX depends on when the changes and the amendments of the electricity trading rules (ETR) will be adopted by the Energy and water regulatory commission (EWRC). The changes in ETR are necessary to establish a legal framework for the operations of the energy exchange.
IBEX will function as a day-ahead market only for electrical energy. The bids for purchase or sale could be submitted 2 weeks before the delivery day, the final deadline is 12:00 central European time (CET) in the trading day, prior to the day of delivery. For every time interval (for every hour) 64 bids could be submitted. Every bid should contain the price and the corresponding capacity in MW. After the submission of the bids is completed and the tender is closed Nord pool spot’s platform calculates the electricity prices for every time interval in the delivery day.
Timetable for bidding and publishing of the results:
| Central European time | Trading stages |
| 12:00 | Deadline for submission or changes in the bids |
| 12:42 | Calculations and publishing of the preliminary results |
| 12:52 | Publishing of the official results for the current tender on the web page of IBEX |
| 12:55 | Sending notifications to the market participants for their deals |
| 12:55 | Sending schedule notifications to TSO |
The platform and the interface of IBEX are supplied by Nord pool spot, which will be the exchange operator. The main activities and responsibilities of IBEX will be:
- first line support
- link between the trading participants and Nord Pool spot
- monitoring of the bids and the exchanges
- financial management related to the market
- contractor of all deals
IBEX is going to be a contractor in all the deals. This means that all purchases and sales will be made through and guaranteed by IBEX. The deals will be guaranteed by securities – bank securities, deposits on IBEX bank account or a combination of both. The initial deadline for depositing the securities is 11:30 (CET) on trading day (prior to the day of delivery).
At the moment there are ongoing tests of IBEX platform taking place in Oslo, soon the Bulgarian team of IBEX will join them. Before the official launching of the exchange there will be a training period and a test period where all future market participants will be involved. The tests will start at the beginning of the second half of November. Hans-Arild Bredesen – CEO of Nord Pool consulting, stated that IBEX is approved as an Associate member of two European market consolidations – Price Coupling of Regions (PRC) and Multi-Regional Coupling.
To trade on the electricity exchange, generators, traders and consumers should pay entry fees. The fees will be 4 types – tariff for participation, yearly fee depending on the traded quantities, fee on the income and settlement fee. The size of the fees will be determined till the end of October and will be published on the web page of IBEX (www.ibex.bg). The size of the tariffs is of crucial importance for attracting more market participants and guaranteeing enough liquidity on the market. The registered market participants will select two representatives responsible for trading on the exchange. IBEX on the other hand will provide them a special training on the platform. After a successful completion of the training and after an exam the two representatives will be granted a certificate, giving them the right to trade on the exchange. They will also receive a user name, password and a digipass to the system of IBEX.
Independent Bulgarian energy exchange is a daughter company of Bulgarian energy holding (BEH) and as such BEH will control its activities Moreover, IBEX could be controlled by the Energy and water regulatory commission (EWRC) regulating IBEX responsibilities on the license for organizing and operating an exchange. In addition to this external regulation of IBEX activities, an internal board committee will monitor the actions of the exchange operator. Chairman of the committee will be a member of IBEX and the rest of the board participants will be representatives of generators, traders and consumers. The members of the board will be selected 3 to 6 months after launching the exchange, the selection criteria will be: participation on the exchange, experience, expertise.
At the end of the conference Mr. Konstantin Konstantinov announces that 3 of the main power plants in Bulgaria will sell electricity on the exchange – NPP Kozloduy, TPP Maritsa East 2 and National electric company (NEC). Two of them will start selling at the launch of the exchange and the other one will join them soon afterwards. TPP Maritsa East 2 is going to be one of the first two plants offering electricity on the exchange. According to Mr. Konstantinov expectations the amount of energy traded on Bulgarian energy exchange will be between 300 to 600 MW.
More information about the launching of Independent Bulgarian Energy Exchange could be found in the presentation from the event: HERE