RTO: a cooperative model in the European context

European countries such as Norway and the UK were the forerunners in the worldwide ongoing revolution in the electrical industry. The European Community Directive of 1996 clearly demands an unbundling, open competition and allows for open third party access. It has stipulated a stepwise opening of the market where all the consumers have freedom to choose the supplier. The member countries are following the Directive in its general framework within the given degree of freedom in time of implementation and percentage of opening of market. Various European countries are in different stages in this change process Third party access has been accepted and practiced and the transmission capacity allocation is slowly moving towards market-oriented methods. Work is going on in the fields of cross border tariff, balance management, transmission costing and congestion management to make one unified European Internal Electricity market which is not restricted by the national or regional boundaries. The paper briefly describes the state of the European electricity market.