Dear Customer,

Starting with 01 October 2022, Trading Hub Europe (THE) will introduce a storage levy (gas storage neutrality charge / Gasspeicherumlage) which will be charged for all exits at SLP, RLM and cross-border points. However, storage exits are excluded from this levy.

For ensuring that the storage levy will not be charged at storage points, all balancing group managers who are currently active at storages need to conclude a contract for a specific storage balancing group with THE (THE0BFH6…/”Balancing group for storage”). This balancing group will not be charged with the storage levy and can therefore only be used for exits to storages. It will be impossible to use other exit bookings (SLP, RLM, cross-border) within these balancing groups. However, it is possible to assign several/all storages to the same balancing group. Entry bookings are not affected by these restrictions. You can already conclude these balancing groups with THE since 15 August 2022.

We – being a transport system operator (TSO) – are also affected by this change. For being able to offer our customers transports at the storages connected to our grid without charging the new levy, we need to know these new balancing groups and have to activate them for your bookings of transport capacities to storages on PRISMA. Therefore, we kindly ask you to conclude the above stated new balancing groups with THE and forward this information to us using the attached form until Monday, 19 September 2022.

Currently, there are three possible scenarios:

Regular/discounted storage transports:
In case you only use storages that are solely connected to the THE market area (USP Wolfersberg or USP Inzenham) or use storages which are also connected to Austria (Haiming 2-7F/bn, Haiming 2-RAGES/bn, USP Haidach) only for “THE transports” (injection and withdrawal from THE market area), please state your current balancing group as well as your newly concluded (regular/discounted) balancing group for storages (THE0BFH6…) using the attached form (mail 17 August 2022).
Furthermore, please state if you want us to reallocate already existing capacity bookings at storages (either all or only exit) to the new balancing group. Please note that all existing exit bookings at storages which remain in existing, old balancing groups will be charged with the storage levy! Therefore, we recommend allocating all (or at least the exit) bookings at storages to the new balancing group. In case you choose “Yes” (=all) or “Only Exit” in the attached excel form, we will remove all (or all exit) storage bookings from your existing balancing group and allocate them to your newly concluded storage balancing group.

Cross-border/undiscounted storage transports:
In case you use the storages which are also connected to Austria (Haiming 2-7F/bn, Haiming 2-RAGES/bn, USP Haidach) for transports between both market areas (THE <-> Austrian Market Area East [Marktgebiet Ost]) and therefore use specific undiscounted balancing groups (THE0BFH9…), these balancing groups will automatically be excluded from the storage levy and remain unchanged.
However, please note that these balancing groups can from 01 October 2022 onwards only be used for exits to storage points. Entry bookings are not affected by these restrictions.

DZK Benchmarking Point-to-Point transports at USP Haidach – Uberackern 2:
In case you intend to use the point-to-point product between the storage USP Haidach and the cross-border point Uberackern 2 – please get in touch with us for further clarification.

After we received all information regarding your current and future balancing groups at storages, we will activate these new balancing groups for bookings on PRISMA.

Regarding the operational setup for nomination and matching, we will proceed as follows:

We will create new, additional shippercodes based on your newly concluded balancing groups (=internal shippercode) and the already existing external shippercodes at storages. So, your external shippercodes (storage side) remains unchanged and your internal shippercodes (TSO side) for newly concluded balancing groups will be the balancing group code itself.

After all these changes have been done during the week 19 – 22 September 2022, we highly recommend to exchange test messages in the week before the start of the new gas year – from 26 – 30 September 2022. It goes without saying that these changes pose a great challenge for all parties involved!

For further information regarding the storage levy please check the current version of section 35e EnWG and the BDEW guideline entitled “market processes balancing group management gas part 1” („Marktprozesse Bilanzkreismanagement Gas Teil 1”).

For further information regarding the operational changes, please do not hesitate to contact us.