Spanish Power Exchange Market and Information System Design concepts, and operating experience

Since January, 1st, 1998, the new Spanish: Since January, 1st, 1998, the new Spanish Electricity Market started operations. All generators, distributors, commercialization companies, and final consumers negotiate all power exchanges through the spot market. The Spanish Power Exchange Market Operator (Compañia Operadora del Mercado Español de Electricidad COMEL) is responsible for the management of the market and for the economic settlement of all transactions between market participants. COMEL has developed its particular IT solution to manage the market. Its main characteristics are full use of internet technologies, security PKI authentication, communications redundancy, and a central database where all information is stored and consulted. This paper describes in detail the Spanish market principles, the IT solution chosen at COMEL for the management of the market and the experience gathered through the design, installation and first year of market operation. The paper presents also the Spanish market results from January 1998 up to February 1999 indicating each specific market results and aggregate statistics.