Energy Exchange Istanbul Turkey’s (EXIST) expects to complete a market coupling agreement with Georgia and Bulgaria’s energy exchanges by 2018 or 2019 while talks for collaboration with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Romania’s energy bourses have accelerated, Hasan Huseyin Savas, EXIST’s general manager said.
“At the moment, we are ready to hold further talks with any country which is interested in market coupling. This could be Iran, countries in the Arabian peninsula or in the Balkans, or Cyprus,” Savas told Anadolu Agency in an interview recently.
Market coupling, in use since 2006, is an agreement between transmission system operators and market operators of two or more countries, in which they use a common algorithm to settle market transactions.
Turkey has the potential to become an energy hub in the region due to the magnitude of its installed capacity in electricity, its geographic location and its increasing power consumption, Savas said.
“I think we will achieve more solid results in terms of integration with other markets in the next few years, as we begin to be more known globally,” he said.
“We started our exchange from scratch in 2015 and brought to life many important projects. We have now prepared EXIST’s five-year strategic plan,” he said.
The strategic plan covers efforts to gain global recognition, to encourage Turkey's transformation into a regional energy center, to progress in market couplings and further develop the Transparency Platform. The platform was established in 2016 to target the effective and fair functioning of Turkey’s electricity market.
The exchange aims to post $6.2 million in profits in the first half 2016 and anticipates posting net profits of 18 million liras ($6.2 million) at the end of 2016, compared with the 5.6 million liras ($1.93 million) losses it posted at the end of 2015, Savas said.
It also aims to achieve total investments of about 9 million liras ($3.1 million) by the end of the year, he added.
EXIST, established in 2015, became a member of the Association of European Exchanges (EUROPEX) in June this year, with the association’s general assembly planned to be held in Istanbul in 2017. It also replaced its Intra-Day Market software with one designed entirely by the exchange’s software engineers.
EXIST may set up a spot natural gas market within the exchange in the first quarter of 2017, Savas said. Feasibility studies are also underway to launch carbon, green certificate, coal and oil markets, he added.
“We reported losses last year due to limited revenues and high operational costs, brought on by our launch,” Savas said. “This year we expect to post profits, spurred by market operation tariffs,” he said.
“The recent changes to renewable energy regulations in granting participants the responsibility to manage the energy imbalances has spurred on significant increases in volume in the Intra-Day market,” Savas said. Trading volume in the Intra-Day market surged past 13 million liras ($4.5 million) in June alone, with the highest amount of transactions on a daily basis since EXIST’s launch recorded on June 17, 2016 at 8,711 MWh.
EXIST reported a transaction volume of 56.05 terrawatt/hour (TWh) in the Day Ahead Market in the first six months of 2016, with trade volume totaling more than 15 billion liras ($5.2 billion), according to data provided by the exchange.
At the end of 2015, the transaction volume reached around 100 TWh, with trade volume hitting a total of about 28.5 billion liras ($9.8 billion).
By Sibel Akbay
Anadolu Agency
sibel.akbay@aa.com.tr