Electricity market

Both the practical implementation and market impact has in our experience been good on the whole. A good illustration of the benefits of the open power market that we have in Norway may be achieved by making comparisons to
the market in Sweden. The conclusion is clear. Swedish households paid in 1998 almost twice as much for power compared to the Norwegian households.

The market is now regarded as being sufficiently open in order to realise an efficient market over time. What remains now is to establish electronic data routines that can improve the efficiency of the information management in order to increase the flexibility of the market and reduce the management costs.

The efforts of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Administration (NVE) to establish new regulations for the metering and settlement of trading in electricity started in February 1994. Our task was to develop a better method of complying with the requirements of the Energy Act regarding market access for the end users of electricity. In addition, there was a need to clarify the rights of the parties involved in the trading of electricity, i.e. the network owners, power suppliers, power exchange/power pool and end users.

The network owner's obligation to make provisions so that the end users could change their supplier was established in the Energy Act of June 1990 and the Regulations of December 1990 pursuant to this Act.

Section 4-4b of the regulations states: "The concessionaire is
obligated to make unused transmission capacity in the network system available to others engaged in the supply of electricity, as well as the producers and users of electrical energy.
This obligation also applies when the users of electrical energy buy power on the power market or from other suppliers." Since it is not permitted to operate a network or sell energy without a concession, the entire Norwegian electricity supply market is thus subject to this rule.