CREG approves Elia's revised CRM availability-test selection procedure to handle single-quarter-hour price spikes

On 10 July 2026 the CREG board adopted Decision (B)3251 approving Elia Transmission Belgium's proposed modification to the procedure for selecting availability-control moments and the Capacity Market Units (CMUs) subject to availability testing under section 9.4.1.4 of the Belgian CRM Functioning Rules. Elia submitted the proposal on 26 June 2026, separately from the normal Functioning Rules revision cycle, to adapt the procedure following the introduction of the quarter-hourly day-ahead market time unit: in certain situations this can produce price spikes limited to a single quarter-hour, which could trigger very short availability tests reflecting short-term flexibility needs rather than structural adequacy stress. The revised procedure — annexed as the confidential 'Smart Testing Methodology for the Belgian Capacity Remuneration Mechanism' — replaces Annex 1 of Decision (B)3172 of 19 March 2026 as from publication of the new decision. No public consultation was held, justified by the confidential nature of the procedure, which the Functioning Rules state is not publicly disclosed (§557). CREG offered no substantive comments on the content, finding it consistent with prior technical discussions with Elia, but stated that practical application will be closely monitored and a future revision may be envisaged based on implementation experience.

Availability monitoring is the enforcement backbone of the Belgian capacity mechanism: Article 7undecies §12 of the 1999 Electricity Act requires the Functioning Rules to set availability obligations and penalties, and Article 22(1)(e) and (i) of Regulation (EU) 2019/943 require capacity mechanisms to incentivise availability during system stress and to penalise unavailability. How test moments are triggered therefore determines the effective firmness and risk profile of capacity contracts. The move to quarter-hourly day-ahead market time units created a mismatch: a scarcity signal lasting a single 15-minute interval could trigger an availability test even though it signals a short-term flexibility need rather than an adequacy shortfall. Correcting the trigger logic protects capacity providers — particularly energy-limited and slower-responding CMUs — from penalty exposure driven by intraday volatility artefacts, while preserving the credibility of testing during genuine tension periods. CREG explicitly accelerated the approval outside the Functioning Rules cycle because it was in capacity providers' interest for the correction to apply as soon as possible.

This is a small but instructive example of second-order design debt from the 15-minute market time unit transition. Scarcity-based availability testing in the Belgian CRM keys off market price signals as a proxy for system stress; when the granularity of the price signal moves from hourly to quarter-hourly, the statistical distribution of 'trigger events' changes materially — more, shorter, spikier events. Without recalibration, a mechanism designed to test firm capacity during structural scarcity starts testing capacity against short-duration flexibility events, which is both an allocative error (testing the wrong product attribute) and a penalty-risk transfer to capacity providers who priced their bids under the previous regime. Approving this via an off-cycle standalone decision rather than the annual Functioning Rules revision signals CREG treats the mismatch as materially affecting bid economics in near-term delivery periods. The confidentiality of the Smart Testing Methodology is a deliberate anti-gaming design choice: publishing the selection algorithm would let CMUs anticipate test windows and optimise availability declarations around them, hollowing out the monitoring regime. The trade-off is reduced transparency and limited ability for market participants or analysts to verify that trigger thresholds are calibrated proportionately — a tension CREG partly acknowledges by flagging close monitoring of application and possible future revision on the basis of experience. Watch whether accumulated implementation experience produces a further revision, and whether other member states with scarcity-triggered availability obligations face equivalent recalibration needs as 15-minute MTU rolls out.

Article 7undecies §12 of the Belgian Law of 29 April 1999 on the organisation of the electricity market; section 9.4.1.4 and §557 of the CRM Functioning Rules (approved by Royal Decree of 4 July 2025); Article 22(1)(e) and 22(1)(i) of Regulation (EU) 2019/943

—

Primary sources