Discussion Paper: Balancing Contracts
The Legal Regulation Working Group of ERRA has, according to its adopted Work Program for
2009, devised this discussion paper in order to get a better insight into the legal aspects of
balancing contracts and mechanisms that are either in place or planned within the ERRA
members. As terminology across varying jurisdictions often differs, we would like to clarify at the
very beginning that the term “balancing contracts” in this paper is used to identify those contracts
that cover the relations between the market players and the respective responsible bodies (system
operators, market operators, etc.) in terms of the responsibility for imbalances, and not the
procurement of balancing energy by the respective system operators. The paper represents the
product of the Legal Regulation WG as a whole, and each and every individual that has taken part
with their contribution. In order to fulfill its mandate the WG devised a questionnaire with the
purpose of identifying the implemented or planned framework of Balancing Contracts, with updated
data on the regime in each ERRA Member as of the end of 2009. Given the complexity of the
issues at stake, the paper gives a general overview and touches upon the most important aspects
of the legal frameworks in place or under consideration. Hence, if the reader should be interested
in the very details of a specific framework, the members of the ERRA Legal Regulation Working
Group from the respective jurisdiction are available and willing to provide such details upon request
to interested parties. The WG finally conducted a mini case study on the basis of publicly available
template contracts in three ERRA Members (Poland, Croatia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina).