ELECPOR’s Managing Director, Maria João Coelho, together with her fellow panellists, João Torres, APE, Rita Silva, ENSE, João Faria Conceição, REN, Miguel Faria, Floene and Álvaro Laranjo, APEG, debated the importance of supervision and prevention in a panel dedicated to Infrastructures and Services for Final Energy Consumption. The panel was moderated by Tatiana Matos, DGAE.

ELECPOR, emphasising the importance of looking at the electricity system as a whole, from generation to consumption, including the transmission and distribution network, highlighted the following key messages:

• Grid capacity is fundamental, from the perspective of how energy is injected on the producers’ side and how it reaches consumers. On the one hand, monitoring helps ensure that all operators comply with the same rules and regulations, promoting competition and a competitive market. On the other hand, because access to the network has expanded, with more players and greater complexity, including the consumer with an ever-increasing capacity for intervention (self-consumption; prosumer; electric mobility; storage), the more the new players know the (technical) rules, the better the quality of service provision and the better the competition.

Thus, ENSE as an information partner, acting on the side of pedagogy and prevention, was a perspective shared by the various speakers.

• Security of supply was another key message emphasised by ELECPOR, in which ENSE also plays a role. In this context, the need to adopt a capacity mechanism in Portugal was mentioned, taking into account the resource adequacy problems identified in the RMSA-E 2023. The capacity mechanism should be implemented through a competitive process open to all resources. On the other hand, flexibility mechanisms and the need to operationalise system services markets (balancing and local flexibility) were highlighted, and it must be ensured that the markets are transparent, competitive, non-discriminatory, technologically neutral and adequately remunerated.