In October last year, the Competition Council found that 49 energy producers through the company Effekthandel had violated the Competition Act in the period from September 2019 to at least August 2022. The Council believed that the companies had illegally coordinated prices for supplying reserve capacity to the electricity system in Western Denmark.
However, 40 of the 49 notified utilities disagree with this decision so much that they want the courts to rule on the matter. This is reported by Lemvig Folkeblad.
- We have been accused - and so we have made a joint case to find out what is up and down in this, says Lemvig Varmeværk chairman, Per Strøm Kristensen.
According to the Competition Council, the violation occurred when Effekthandel coordinated the bids from the plants at the auctions for the so-called mFFR (Manual Frequency Restoration Reserve), which Energinet purchases. The winners of the auction will be entitled to send electricity into the system on an hourly basis if there is a risk of an imbalance in it.
Should push up the price
The evidence in the case showed that the 49 plants are part of a common pool scheme, where Effekthandel informed about the coordinated trade in emails. It also appeared here that the purpose of the pool was to raise prices in the market.
In addition, emails were also sent about the individual plants' registered capacity and a distribution key for each plant's payments for selling extra electricity to the electricity system.
The pool scheme meant that the plants were paid regardless of whether their bid won an auction or not, because Effekthandel distributed the revenue from the auctions between the plants based on the capacity they had registered. Effekthandel itself received a commission from the plants' earnings. The Competition Council therefore believed that this was against the Competition Act.
Not all companies have yet been fined for the violation so far. Per Strøm Kristensen expects that the fine will be in the range between 0-10 percent of the individual plants' turnover. For Lemvig Varmeværk this will mean a fine of up to eight million DKK.
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