Elering Sets Up the Electricity Market Development Council in Cooperation with Partners

This is the second council set up by Elering to contribute to developing Estonia’s energy economy with the help of partners. The first partnership council, the Power Network Development Council, assembled on February 12 this year. Representatives of companies involved in electricity sales, transmission networks, representatives of sellers and consumers, and experts from state offices are involved in the work of the Electricity Market Development Council. Given the ambition of the regional electricity market, in the future more partners will have to be included from abroad. The work of the council is led by CEO of Elering Taavi Veskimägi and the electricity market development manager Ingrid Arus. Veskimägi says that special attention has to be paid to including all parties at a time when important changes are taking place in energy economy, in order to guarantee that market participants are informed and the decision processes are transparent, thus creating predictability for market participants when they are making their decisions. The electricity market, which will open 35% from April 1, is the first step towards a common Nordic-Baltic electricity market. Veskimägi believes this means that a lot of work has already been done, but much work is still to do, and this is where the newly-created council will play an important role. "An electricity market with functioning competition is not something that is obviously essential or comprehensible in a small country. Quite the opposite in fact, twice as much work has to be done to achieve it. This can only be done when all parties cooperate using all existing resources, and thus the development of partnerships is important for Elering, in order to find a common agreement how to proceed with developing the market most efficiently and avoiding potential problems from the start," said Veskimägi.  The Electricity Market Development Council is Elering’s way of cooperating through partnerships, its objective is to involve market participants and experts in developing and supporting the development of the open electricity market and of Elering. The objective of the work of the council is to exchange information and develop positions which enable parties to come to common agreements on developing the electricity market at the regional level and on international cooperation. The council will be discussing the topical issues of the electricity market at least once every four months. Elering is a company that works in energy transmission and that guarantees the operational reliability of the electricity system which unites Estonia’s largest power plants, distribution networks and large users into an integral energy system.