For the sixth year in a row, Energy Brainpool hosted the symposium “Energy Market of the Future”. At the two-day conference from 21 to 22 March experts from economics, science and politics discussed current topics of the German and European energy industry. The focus of the discussion was on the question of how the electricity market can be further developed. In detail future regulatory mechanisms, energy storages, the future of spot trading, possible bulls in global commodity markets as well as chances and risks of Big Data, Blockchain and digitization were discussed.
The first day of the top-class event was covering different aspects of the electricity market design. Eike Dehning from dhng Consulting directed attention to the mega trends in ecology, society, technology, politics and energy and compared the electricity market to the engine room of society. Dr. Peter Menk from the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi) illustrated the time after the Electricity Market Act and the influence of the act on the electricity market design. The approaches in the Electricity Market Act aim at open price formation and competition between all producers as well as flexibility options and take the European perspective of security of supply into account. A summary of the EU-Winterpaket was given and was very helpful for many of the attendees. Menck said that the ministry will publish a monitoring report on the electricity market and on security of supply in summer 2018. Till then the ministry will observe how possibilities to influence the security of supply adjusted.
“We are going in the right direction”, says Volker Stehmann, Head of Markets & Renewables at Innogy about the recently approved EU-Winderpaket. Nevertheless, he wished that the electricity-package and gas-package (published in 2018) would have been developed together, so that the sector coupling could have been integrated in a better way.
The next Item on the agenda covered energy storages as flexibility options. How can the petrol station of the future look? Dr. Katrin Goldammer from the Reiner Lemoine Institut dealt with this question. She concluded that the transport sector enables a great amount of flexibility options when the required charging infrastructure is build. Afterwards Dr. Hans Wolf von Koeller from Steag shared his experiences on usage and efficiency of big battery storages. Battery storages are a fundamental part of the energy transition because of their support on grid stability and system stability. Dr. Christian Riessen from the Deutsche Kreditbank AG (DKB) discussed energy storages from a Banks perspective. He showed a strong increase of market demand for flexibility options. This development puts Banks in technological, market and price forecast means to new challenges.
Experts from Likron, MKonline and Next Kraftwerke closed the first day with an outlook on the future of short-term trading. Dr. Henryk Pinnow from Likron summarized in his presentation on trading robots, that the tasks of traders will shift from active trading to monitoring, performance review and further development of strategies and systems. Trading robots will not replace the human trader, but trader and systems will be “colleges”.
Dr. Blazej Radomski (MKonline) presented current trends in intraday trading. His Data analysis showed impressively which fundamental factors influence the intraday market and its prices. Amani Joas (Next Kraftwerke) concluded this block with a progress report on balancing group management, especially the active short-term optimization and its challenges. He also showed that internal flexibilities are an important addition for intraday trade.
The second day of the Symposium energy market of the future was focused on the discussion on the commodity markets 2030 and future price bulls. Angela Pietroni from Energy Brainpool concluded that decarbonization of transport due to electrification needs an increase of additional renewable energies, especially wind and PV. She visualized the price signals for flexibility options and showed that long-term solutions are needed.
Dr. Torsten Bischoff from Trianel talked about the question if there is any money in gas power plants. They are in a dramatic situation: they face great challenges, because they have to gain their contribution margins in less and less operating hours and often they are just run on minimal hours. He still sees highly efficient gas power plants as a part of the energy transition but a regulatory adaption of the CO2 market is necessary.
With Jana Ohlendorf the participants had a look at China. She introduced the energy policy of the giant country compressed and jet detailed – not an easy undertaking with such a complex topic.
The brave new world around Big Data, Blockchain and digitization was the central point in the last block. Prof. Dr. Jens Strückers (inewis) central question was; “Transaction costs when trading minimum quantities – is the Blockchain a solution?”. Afterwards Thomas Koller of enersis europe illustrated the challenges, chances and application possibilities of collecting and processing big quantities of relevant data. In the energy industry just very few are recognized. The conclusion was made by Dr. Merz from Ponton with his presentation on early stage application possibilities of the Blockchain. The topic was new for some participants and showed once more was the Blockchain can and can’t do.
The 6th Symposium was a success for the participants, the speakers and the organizer. Important players of the energy industry intensively exchanged views against the background of the energy transition, the changing market conditions, new regulations and the long-term protection of economic efficiency and security of supply in the energy market.
