The electricity transmission system operators (TSOs) of the Platform for the International Coordination of Automated Frequency Restoration and Stable System Operation (PICASSO) are pleased to announce that the platform has been brought successfully into operation on 1 June 2022. The PICASSO Go-Live takes place almost two months ahead of the legal implementation deadline set by the Electricity Balancing Regulation (EB Regulation) on 24 July 2022.

The launch of the PICASSO platform marks the beginning of a European-wide coupling of national balancing markets for frequency restoration reserves with automatic activation (aFRR) by the deployment of, for example, a standard product, harmonized gate closure times, a common merit order list, a central activation optimization function, merit order activation and a harmonized pricing of balancing energy.

CEPS, the Czech TSO, has accessed the new platform on the day of the go-live. CEPS is indeed the first TSO with a national market for balancing energy from aFRR in operation and that is connected to PICASSO in accordance with the EB Regulation.

With this first accession, the opening of PICASSO’s operation will not yet result in any TSO-TSO interchanges of balancing energy from aFRR. These will start with the next wave of accessions of TSOs from Germany and Austria, which is expected to occur on 22 June 2022. Further planned accessions are published in the PICASSO accession roadmap.

Notes

About PICASSO

PICASSO is the implementation project endorsed by all TSOs through the ENTSO-E Market Committee. PICASSO project includes 26 TSO members and 4 TSO observers (see PICASSO webpage for further details). The project establishes the European platform for the exchange of balancing energy from frequency restoration reserves with automatic activation or aFRR-Platform, pursuant to Article 21 of the Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 of 23 November 2017 establishing a guideline on electricity balancing (EB Regulation). With the approval by ACER of the all TSOs’ proposal regarding the Implementation Framework for PICASSO on 24 January 2020, the legal deadline for implementation of the platform was set to 30 months later, on 24 July 2022, in accordance with Article 22.6 of EB GL.

Press contact

Please contact the press officers of the Member TSOs of the PICASSO project for further information