Tomorrow, on October 1, the Nordic electricity markets will switch from hourly prices to 15-minute prices. The purpose of this transition is to allow market participants to take more responsibility for managing variations in the power system. Following the change, we at CheckWatt will also introduce 15-minute prices in our control.
Companies that buy and sell electricity have what is called balance responsibility, which means they are financially accountable for differences between traded electricity and actual delivered or consumed electricity. With quarter-hour pricing, companies are also responsible for handling variations within the hour – for example, by making better forecasts of customer consumption and electricity production, or by providing stronger financial incentives for customers to use their flexible resources for the benefit of the power system – something that can be done in cooperation with a company like CheckWatt.
Today, many of CheckWatt’s customers have hourly price agreements with their electricity retailer. Already from the start, there will be electricity retailers that replace the current hourly price agreements with quarter-hour agreements. There will also be companies that continue to offer hourly price agreements, but where the hourly price is calculated using the average of the four quarter-hour prices.
On October 1, CheckWatt will switch to quarter-hour prices in the control of the batteries connected to our virtual power plant. The change primarily affects our system CheckWatt AI, which – alongside the delivery of ancillary services and local flexibility – controls the battery based on consumption, solar production and electricity prices in order to reduce electricity costs. The system will therefore take into account quarter-hour prices instead of hourly prices, and our customers will be able to see quarter-hour prices in their respective accounts on EnergyInBalance.
When CheckWatt releases new functionality, we use updated software versions. Since this is a relatively large change, and to avoid the risk of disturbances, we will recalculate quarter-hour prices into hourly prices in all older software versions, based on the average price per hour. The consequence may be that the battery to a lesser degree charges during the cheapest quarter (and does not discharge during the most expensive quarter). As we verify that the control works well in the new software versions, systems will gradually be updated, only taking the quarter-hour prices into account.
