Eight European transmission system operators (TSOs) have launched TERRE, the European platform for the exchange of balancing energy, which will enable the balance between electricity generation and demand to be managed in a coordinated manner at a European level after adjustments to schedules in the intraday market are made.

The TERRE platform, supported on an IT platform named LIBRA and on international interconnections, will enable an even more efficient management of balancing energy, by replacing national balancing markets and bilateral balancing energy exchange mechanisms between neighbouring interconnected systems for a European multilateral TSO-TSO system.

Its use will help reduce the final price of energy and optimise the integration of renewable generation within Europe. This is a decisive step in the implementation of the Internal Electricity Market in Europe.

The implementation of this platform is the result of a joint initiative between the Transmission System Operators of Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and Switzerland. In addition, the platform fulfils the requirements set out in Article 19 of the Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 of 23 November 2017 establishing a guideline on electricity balancing (EB Regulation).

CEPS, the Czech TSO, has been the first to use this new TERRE platform. Spain, which has been managing cross-border energy balancing services with France and Portugal in a bilateral manner since June 2014, will begin to use this transnational platform in the first quarter of 2020. The rest of the TSOs plan to do so throughout 2020 and 2021.