French CRE approves power coupling with Italy

OREANDA-NEWS.  French energy regulator CRE has approved day-ahead power market coupling between Italy and France, clearing another hurdle for the launch of market coupling on three of Italy's borders in two weeks.

Power coupling is expected to go live on Italy's borders with France, Italy and Slovenia on 24 February, subject to final approvals from the energy regulators of all three countries. France's CRE has now given the green light, saying that this will result in a €30mn/yr (\$34mn/yr) reduction in the cost of supply in the two countries.

The market coupling mechanism ensures that interconnections are used from the country in which electricity is the cheapest towards the country with more expensive electricity to satisfy each country's power needs at the lowest cost.

Once power coupling is launched, the three borders will become part of multi-regional coupling (MRC), which will cover 20 European countries. France will be coupled with all of its EU member state neighbours. It became coupled with Belgium and the Netherlands in 2007, with Germany in 2010 and with the UK and Italy in 2014.

The next step in further integration of European power markets will be the launch of flow-based market coupling, scheduled for spring 2015, CRE said. The start of central western European flow-based coupling was pushed back from 1 April to 23 April last week.