Wind and solar power traders see great danger from planned change in German law

A planned amendment to the German Energy Industry Act poses major risks to the market integration of renewables, according to 17 domestic and foreign traders of electricity from renewable sources. In a position paper, the companies, which place a total generation capacity of »well over 45 gigawatts of solar and wind power on the power exchanges every day,« call for the amendment to be abandoned, especially since they believe it would also violate EU law.
Like other players on the electricity market, the companies are allocated a so-called balancing group for their transactions. Due to fluctuating generation, especially from wind and solar power plants, they cannot provide a completely accurate forecast for this balancing group, which has so far been regulated by the transmission system operators with balancing energy. Since this entails considerable costs for the electricity traders, they have an inherent incentive to make forecasts that are as accurate as possible. According to the companies, this procedure »has proved extremely successful.«
However, it is now planned that in the future an unbalanced balancing group will per se constitute a violation of the obligation to balance the balancing group. This would put direct marketers of solar and wind power in constant danger of being legally prosecuted »because they forecast and trade fluctuating electricity generation.«
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