Ambitious smart grid cooperation should continue to promote customer-centric electricity markets
The Finnish smart grid working group suggests concrete measures to promote customers’ opportunities to participate in electricity markets and to ensure security of supply. Fingrid wants the results to be implemented swiftly.
The Finnish smart grid working group, led by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, has finished their work after two years of cooperative collaboration. Two electricity market experts from Fingrid has participated actively to the work. The task was to suggest concrete measures to promote customers’ opportunities to participate in electricity markets and to ensure security of supply in a clean electricity system. The report, published today, describes various opportunities of smart electricity system and improvements to electricity markets.
- It is great to see how the broad group representing various stakeholders have found many measures to improve the operating environment for customer-centric service development. The customers can choose themselves services and contribute to realization of a smarter grid, notes Asta Sihvonen-Punkka, Fingrid’s director responsible for electricity market development.
The working groups has set an ambitious timetable for implementation. The changes are planned to happen mainly between 2019-2021. Fingrid considers the swift schedule to be important as they facilitate the integration of renewable energy into the power system.
Many of the suggested measures are related to datahub that Fingrid is already working actively. Many suggestions however also require changes to legislation and cooperation between many stakeholders to solve details, for example related to combined billing of distribution charges and energy.
Good cooperation should be continued also with still unresolved smart grid challenges.
- The working groups’ measures are a good start towards customer-centric and real-time electricity markets. It is important to continue the ambitious work to include all distributed resources to the market in future, states Sihvonen-Punkka.
Future topics include new market places for distributed flexibility, promoting of new energy-related technologies and sector coupling between electricity, heat and gas. Finland has an opportunity to be the forerunner regionally and in Europe.
Further information:
Specialist Heidi Uimonen, Fingrid Oyj, firstname.lastname@fingrid.fi
Corporate adviser Risto Lindroos, Fingrid Oyj, firstname.lastname@fingrid.fi