Annual Report 2010 - Enel.com

Operation of the Mercado de Corto Plazo (MCP)
The draft Supreme Decree introducing amendments to
the operating rules of the Mercado de Corto Plazo (MCP)
was published in June. The changes are designed to increase
the transparency of the market (requiring market
agents to declare their expected demand for the subsequent
day).
With the Decreto de Urgencia 079/2010 of December 16,
2010, the Decreto de Urgencia 049/2008 was extended
until December 31, 2013. The extension was made necessary
by the delay in approving draft law 4335-2010-PE
(amending Law 28832), which will introduce a permanent
mechanism to reduce the risk of high marginal costs
for the system in the event of transmission grid congestion.
The government estimates that by the end of 2013,
thanks in part to infrastructure upgrades, the crisis situation
that prompted the adoption of the Decreto de Urgencia
049/2008 should have been resolved.
Remuneration of distribution activities
OSINERGMIN has announced a new calculation of the
VAD (Valor Agregado de Distribución) for distribution
companies in response to a number of objections raised by
Luz del Sur concerning the VAD set in November 2009 for
the November 2009 - October 2013 period. The change
slightly reduces (0.1%) the distribution rate from the level
approved in November 2009. On October 4, 2010, OSIN-
ERGMIN established the definitive value for the VAD for
Edelnor, which remains virtually unchanged (+0.1%), partially
granting the appeal of the distribution company.
Secondary natural gas market
On August 5, 2010 the Ministry of Energy and Mineral
Resources approved Supreme Decree 46-2010-EM, regulating
the secondary gas market where gas and transport
capacity is traded through electronic auctions held on
MECAP (Mercado Electrónico de las subastas de Transferencia
de Producción y/o Capacidad de Transporte a Firme
de Gas Natural). Secondary gas market transactions may
take the form of bilateral contracts for a transitional period
of no more than one year. After that, only centralized
auctions can be used. The creation of the secondary gas
market means that the electricity sector will enjoy more
flexible provisioning arrangements.
International
France
60 Enel Annual Report 2010 Report on operations
NOME Act
In March 2010, the Ministry for Energy distributed the first
draft of the bill for the NOME Act (Nouvelle Organization
du Marché de l’Electricité), setting out the main recommendations
of the Champsaur parliamentary committee.
In June 2010 the French National Assembly examined
the NOME Act at first reading, approving a substantively
amended text on June 15, 2010. After a number of major
amendments introduced by the Senate (September 30,
2010), the final text was approved by the National Assembly
on November 24, 2010, and published the following
December 8.
The NOME Act contains reform measures that will gradually
open up the French electricity market to competition
and replace the TaRTAM rate for those end users who,
after having opted for a contract with a free-market supplier,
seek to benefit once again from regulated electricity
supplies.
The main components of this reform are:
> access to nuclear-generated base electricity for alternative
suppliers at regulated prices (known as ARENH or
“Accès Régulé à l’Electricité Nucléaire Historique”), for
a 15-year transitional period, with volumes calculated
annually on the basis of the volume of nuclear generation
as a percentage of total consumption, with an annual
ceiling of 100 TWh;
> suppliers are required to adapt their requests for
ARENH to the forecasts for the volume and profile of
their portfolios and the share of nuclear energy used to
cover consumption;
> responsibility for allocating ARENH volumes to suppliers
on an intra-year basis is assigned to CRE;
> an entity independent of EDF and alternative suppliers
will be charged with handling the exchange of information
regarding ARENH, in order to ensure that EDF
does not have access to sensitive information concerning
individual suppliers;
> as from 2013 the network operators may acquire
ARENH power to offset the entire amount of network
losses (currently about 30 TWh). The power allocated
for this purpose will be added (with no ceiling) to the
100 TWh allocated to alternative suppliers (the first version
of the NOME Act had provided for an annual ceiling
of 20 TWh);