ACER today have launched a public consultation on the format and content of the data required to be published with regards to inside information as required by REMIT Article 4. The consultation document can be found here. Responses are required by noon on 26th June.

At present, companies are obliged to publish inside information as outlined in the REMIT Act, and also as outlined in the ACER guidance. There have also been comments from National Regulatory Authorities on the correct data to publish, including a letter from Ofgem last year.

Companies have tended to publish their information either on their own web sites, or on one of several dedicated platforms. However the lack of a properly defined standard has meant a significant divergence in data being published. In addition, there is lack of synchronisation with the Electricity Transparency Regulation (ETR) which has led to some double reporting of data.

The consultation proposes three standard sets of fields, one for power assets, one for gas assets and one for “other”. It also proposes that any platform or site be required to publish the fields in RSS or ATOM format. This makes it easier for “reader” programs to pull data from across the various sites, especially if they are in the same format. This will be made even easier once the CEREMP (the central database of market participants) is live, since each must state to where their inside information is published to.

The results of this consultation will therefore be very welcome, although the requirement to implement the results of the exercise in a similar time frame to the reporting ones will result in yet another item on the ever growing to do list.