NOMINATIONS

After a customer has won capacity in an auction, they will have the option of nominating their capacity. A nomination is an instruction to BritNed from a customer that they will use their capacity. A customer can only nominate their allocated capacity within the conditions for that product which was detailed in the auction specification.

For example, a customer has won 30MW of capacity in a Monthly auction (August 2024 in the NL to GB direction). The customer can nominate up to 30MW for each hour in August 2024 in the NL to GB direction only. The customer has no Transmission Rights to use the interconnector beyond these parameters.

In addition to nominating capacity, customers need to ensure that they have the electricity available in the market that will be sending electricity to the receiving end. At the requested time, BritNed will start to flow electricity from one market to the other and if the customer does not have the required electricity available this will cause an imbalance.

It is important to remember there are 3 key reference points on BritNed:

GB reference point

• The connection point between BritNed and the transmission system in Great Britain
• This is reference point used for the Deemed Meter Volume (DMV) and Final Physical Notification (FPN) files sent to NGESO and Elexon

Mid North Sea

• A theoretical place in the middle of the cable
• Nominations take place at this point

NL reference point

• The connection point between BritNed and the transmission system in the Netherlands
• This is reference point used for the E-Program (Domestic and Foreign) which is sent to TenneT

The reason that the reference points are important on BritNed is due to losses.

Nominations are adjusted to reflect the losses that occur when flowing electricity between the GB and NL reference points. The loss factor is 3% between the GB and NL reference points. When considering losses from the Mid North Sea point, losses are 1.5% between the Mid North Sea reference point and either end of the interconnector.

For example, if a customer nominates 100MW at Mid North Sea in the NL to GB direction, 101.5MW will be sent from the Netherlands and 98.5MW will be received in Great Britain. The customer will need to ensure that the files they send to NGESO and Elexon reflect the 98.5MW and the files they sent to TenneT will need to reflect the 101.5MW.

When calculating losses, it is important to remember that some files require information to be in different units and rounded. We have put together the following example to help show how losses should be calculated.

Nominations need to be received within specified periods known as nomination gates. These gates are set across a range of timescales before delivery depending on the auction product. For example, the Long Term nomination gate closes first, followed by the Day Ahead and then the Intraday for any given delivery day.

For a complete overview of the nomination gates, please see this Nomination Overview.

Maintenance (reduction) periods and unplanned outages can happen and to minimise the impact on our customers, BritNed will not curtail nominations that have passed through the final nomination gate. This means that in the event of an unplanned outage, BritNed will bear the imbalance costs if we are unable to flow any nominations that have passed through the final nomination gate closure.

BritNed will still curtail Transmission Rights in the event of an unplanned outage.

For Intraday, Empire will evaluate all nominations that have been entered into the system and may determine to not curtail some capacity rights if they help reduce the imbalance position cause by the unplanned outage. Further information is available in section E8 of the Access Rules.