Austrian Software for auctioning capacity rights

5th November 2008

Software from Austria is going to auction and manage cross-border power transmission capacity rights in the region of Central Eastern Europe.

This week the contracts covering the delivery of IT-Systems from RIECADO GmbH running power transmission capacity rights auctions and providing administrative services were signed by the Central Allocation Office in Freising near Munich. This marks another important step towards market integration, more secure and economic operation of the European power grids as well as security of supply.

From mid 2009 all cross-border power transmission rights between Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia will be auctioned by the system by RIECADO GmbH that represents an innovation for Europe.

Establishing the Central Allocation office in summer 2008 already meant a step closer to the overall objective of more efficient international power trade in a liberalized European power market. The new system allows for coordinated capacity allocation of cross-border power transmission. In the future the entire daily, monthly and yearly capacities will be allocated through auctions. Thereby, the international power trade will be significantly facilitated and the new concept replaces previous practices such as transmission system operators allocating capacities at their borders individually.

Following several months of tender and award process the contract was awarded to an international consortium comprising Siemens Germany, the Austrian RIECADO GmbH and the Serbian EKC withstanding the competition of 12 other bidders. The software of RIECADO that is operated from the Siemens data processing centre in Fürth is the core element of the system. EKC delivers the respective converters for the grid data processing.

Rober Hager, one managing director of RIECADO says: ”The courage to implement innovative solutions for cross-border trade already at this early stage, gave us the great opportunity to have a test system already in the bidding phase. Innovation together with courage to cooperate on an international level aiming for the best solution possible build the foundation of success of our young business.” RIECADO is a joint-venture among Verbund APG, CISMO and Smart technologies. The Austrian transmission system operator Verbund Austrian Power Grid is the majority shareholder. CISMO is a service provider and is owned by a number of different companies of the Austrian energy industry. Smart Technologies is a joint venture between Siemens and restructuring specialist and former telecom manager Hans-Jörg Tengg.

For more information contact:
RIECADO Regional Energy Capacity Auction Data Operator GmbH
Mag. Theresia Nestlang
phone: +43 1 3190701-58
mail: theresia.nestlang@riecado.at

www.riecado.at
www.cismo.at
www.apg.at
www.smarttech.at