Review of German approaches to ancillary services costing and pricing [electricity supply]

This paper describes the status of current thinking on ancillary services in a German electric utility task force. As the work progresses, the preliminary results presented here could change; the list of relevant services could also be modified. Any implementation of unbundled charges for ancillary services depends on the development of the energy policy framework, e.g., on whether an EU Electricity Directive and/or the recently proposed German national reforms are approved, and on their contents. The changes to thousands of current supply contracts that might be needed if ancillary services charges were unbundled could be difficult to administer; it is unclear how long such a process would take or if it would be successful