Open access in Germany and power balance analyses in Germany and Europe

This paper gives an overview on the development of the German power market since the 1998 liberalization, including some statistics on the the switching rates of customers and the number of wholesale transactions. So far, the pace of increasing competition continues unabated, even though the California crisis is being watched with great interest. The second part of the paper describes recent results of power balance analyses for Germany and especially the entire interconnected European market. Germany and most parts of Europe are not facing a power balance crisis, but some peripheral regions of Europe do have capacity shortfalls. With competition increasing in all parts of Europe, the power balance developments need to be watched carefully.