Unicorn Systems revolutionized the Nordic electricity market by delivering a major upgrade to the Nordic Balance Settlement model, paving the way for the introduction of Independent Aggregators for Balancing Services across the Nordic countries.
Harmonised Nordic Settlement Model
The Nordic electricity market has reached a unique level of integration, enabling a joint platform (Nordic Balance Settlement) to connect all 4 countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) and establish a common imbalance settlement solution for a competitive end-user market.
Increased competition among electricity providers will give rise to socioeconomic efficiency gains in the region. Competition through a common Nordic retail market is considered essential to ensure high-quality services at the lowest price, to stimulate innovation, and to maximise social welfare in the Nordic region.
The introduction of the Independent Aggregator in the Nordic Imbalance Settlement model aims to improve the efficiency, competition, and reliability of the electricity market while enabling the integration of renewable energy sources and ensuring grid stability.
Project Goal
The primary goal of the project was to introduce a new market role: Independent Aggregator, which is a Balancing Service Provider (BSP) capable of aggregating and activating balancing services on a controlled portfolio of assets. As part of the project, the current Balance Responsible Party (BRP) relationship to BSPs has been extended to support multiple relations and responsibilities within one company for invoicing purposes. This new role will be utilised initially in Finland for aFRR balancing reserves and eventually expanded further.
The model supports different types of delivery:
- Owned Assets
- Contractual Assets
- Independent Aggregation
The delivery rules are country-specific. New invoicing products have been added for compensation between the BRPs and BSPs, as well as Regulation Imbalance and fees to settle the imbalance caused by differences between the activation and delivery of balancing energy.
The current balancing services model in the NBS system has been expanded to include Activated Reserves at the BSP level, as well as the actual delivery of balancing energy (Delivered Reserves). These new products come with a variety of new views to allow value monitoring and access to the data for market parties in the public Online Service, as well as new incoming and outgoing data flows to facilitate data exchange.
The solution was designed to be flexible and adaptable to different regulations and requirements in each country, and to allow a smooth transition of each balancing sub-service to its own Go-Live date.
Our Customer
eSett is a company that provides settlement services to electricity market participants in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
It is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, and was established in early 2013 to support the transition to a harmonised imbalance settlement model. In 2017, eSett took over operational responsibility for imbalance settlement and invoicing of market participants in Finland, Norway, and Sweden with the commissioning of the Nordic imbalance settlement model. Denmark joined the Nordic imbalance settlement in 2021. As a joint service company, eSett is owned by the four TSOs with equal shares.
Damas MMS:E
Damas MMS:E is a comprehensive energy market management information system primarily designed and developed for the needs of transmission system operators, HVDC interconnectors, and market operators operating in an open energy market environment.
Damas MMS:E fully supports the market-related processes of transmission system operators and market operators in the following areas:
- System Services – Maintains the system balance using ancillary services efficiently and with minimum costs.
- Transmission Services – Gains income from congestion management and manages cross-border flows.
- Settlement Services – Evaluates and settles energy market transactions and makes and receives payments.
NBS Delivery
Damas MMS:E platform delivery is based on three core pillars: configuration, customisation, and integration with external systems. In the Nordic Balance Settlement, these fundamental principles were utilised to their maximum potential to address the complex situation of the Nordic harmonised settlement model.
Configuration and Customisation
A key strength of Damas MMS:E is its extensive configurability. Fundamental parts of the platform can be set up directly by analysts, allowing the time-efficient and accurate delivery of business implementation.
The platform’s adaptability enables us to efficiently support agile sprint-based delivery, design further upgrades to the solution, prepare prototypes, and connect custom-tailored specific implementations for functionalities outside of the platform’s out-of-the-box tools.
Integrations
Damas MMS:E allows seamless integration to a variety of external systems and market parties. Data flows are facilitated through ECP/EDX, Web Services, FTP, and Email channels via CIM-based Ediel, ebIX XML, and UTILTS document formats. To efficiently manage the high daily message throughput — reaching up to 300,000 — performance optimisation is a critical component of the platform integration.
Business solution detail:
- Extensive standing data management
- System configuration
- Over 14 unique incoming types of input data from:
- Balance Responsible Parties (BRPs)
- Balancing Service Providers (BSPs)
- Transmission System Operators (TSOs)
- Nominated Electricity Market Operators (NEMOs)
- Distribution System Operators (DSOs)
- 15-minute resolution Imbalance Settlement
- Weekly invoicing for BRPs, BSPs and TSOs, covering:
- Imbalance and Regulation Imbalance
- Balancing the services capacity market
- Balancing services activation
- Balancing service delivery and compensation
- Monthly invoicing for Profiled Consumption in Sweden
- Calculation and demand of collateral for invoice market participants
- Extensive reporting options:
- SOAP and REST API Information Service
- Business Intelligence tools
- Publication to eSett’s Public Web
- Public Online Service is accessible to all market participants
- Multiple layers of monitoring for data quality, messages, and data anomaly detection
Market Participants and data scope:
- 250+ BRPs
- 150+ BSPs
- 900+ Retailers
- 500+ DSOs
- 4 TSOs
- 6000+ Users
- ~ 300,000 messages daily
- ~ 1.1 billion values calculated every 5 minutes
Cooperation Timeline with eSett
2025: Independent Aggregator Go-Live for aFRR in Finland
2024: NBS takes over BRP Profiled Consumption Settlement in Sweden
2023: Transition to 15-minute Settlement
2022: BSP and Data Hub Go-Live
2021: Denmark joins, and Single-Balance Settlement is launched
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