Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 — What It Means for BESS

Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 — the Electricity Balancing Guideline — is the instrument that runs the balancing markets across the EU: the products a balancing service provider offers, the platforms those products clear through, how balancing energy is priced, how balancing capacity is procured, and how every balance responsible party is settled for its imbalances. This guide covers the articles of the EB GL that matter to a battery energy storage system, with every rule and threshold anchored to the article that establishes it.

The companion guide on Regulation (EU) 2019/943 covers the market principles that the EB GL implements — marginal pricing, separate up/down procurement, and the requirement that balancing markets be open to storage. This guide is the operational layer: the specific mechanics a BSP and BRP live with every day.

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The Electricity Balancing Guideline

Instrument type

The EB GL is a Commission Regulation — a network guideline adopted under Article 18 of the former Regulation (EC) No 714/2009 (now superseded by Regulation (EU) 2019/943). Like all regulations, it applies directly across all member states without national transposition. But the EB GL differs from the Electricity Regulation (2019/943) in one critical respect: it delegates enormous operational detail to TSO proposals that must be approved by national regulatory authorities. The principles are harmonized; the implementation — product parameters, prequalification processes, pricing methodologies — is built out nationally within those principles.

What it governs — and what it does not

The EB GL runs the markets and settlement for balancing energy from aFRR, mFRR, and RR, and the imbalance netting process. It also governs imbalance settlement — the 15-minute settlement period, the imbalance price, and the settlement of every BRP’s position.

What it does not govern: the reserve requirements themselves. How much FCR, aFRR, and mFRR a synchronous area needs is set by the System Operation Guideline (Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/1485, the “SO GL”), not the EB GL. FCR settlement under the EB GL is optional — a TSO may calculate and settle FCR balancing energy (Article 46), but is not required to. The mandatory settlement applies to FRR (Article 47) and RR (Article 48) balancing energy. This split matters: the rules for how much reserve is needed sit in one instrument, the rules for how it is traded and paid sit in another.

Relationship to the Electricity Regulation

Regulation (EU) 2019/943 sets the principles that the EB GL implements in detail. The Electricity Regulation requires marginal pricing for balancing energy (Article 6(4)), separate procurement of upward and downward capacity (Article 6(9)), and decoupled energy and capacity pricing (Article 6(2)). The EB GL translates these principles into operational rules — the common merit order lists (Article 31), the pricing methodology (Article 30), the procurement process (Article 32). Article 3(1)(f) of the EB GL states explicitly that it aims to facilitate the participation of demand response including aggregation facilities and energy storage.

Key concept: The EB GL is where the Electricity Regulation’s market principles become operational mechanics. If 2019/943 says “marginal pricing,” the EB GL says how: common merit order lists, a pricing methodology based on marginal pricing, at least one price per imbalance settlement period, per direction. When researching a specific balancing market, the principle is in 2019/943; the product definition and clearing mechanism are in the EB GL; and the specific parameters (full activation time, minimum bid) are in the TSO’s national implementation of the EB GL.