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Operating procedures
Storage Access Contract Information System (SICS) is the customer’s interface for managing a storage contract on a day-to-day basis. Its settings are adjusted for the main contractual data per Storage group : capacity (volume and rate), options, etc. The operational management of products is overrun by Storage Group.
Operating procedures give details on all operational information exchanges needed to execute the contract.
The main features of these exchanges are as follows.
Customer requests
The gas operations day starts at 6am on day "D" and ends at 6am the following day ("D+1").
- Request for D+1:
Each day for the following day (before 2pm), the Customer requests from Storengy the quantity it wishes to inject or withdraw during gas day "D+1" for each storage group, as part of the basic storage service of its Storage Access Contract and its option on conditional injection or withdrawal capacity. This option will be deemed as requested for a given day by a customer who has subscribed to this option when the customer’s requested injection or withdrawal quantity exceeds his daily injection or withdrawal capacity given in the basic storage service.
In the same way, a customer can request quantities to inject or withdraw as part of his day-ahead offer from 2.30pm up to 8.00pm on day D for D+1.
- Modifying requests:
For the requested quantities (basic storage service, conditional option, day-ahead), a customer can change his nomination as many times as he likes up to 3 hours before the start of the gas operations day. When the day begins, any modification has to be regulated in proportion to the length of time involved. In every case, the minimum time between request and scheduling is 2 full hours.
Checking requested quantities
Storengy checks whether these requested quantities match the customer’s rights, and issues a verdict at 3 pm on D for D+1. For all other intra-day requests, new daily contractual capacities are calculated proportionately to the remaining hours. The customer’s request corresponds to a desired daily value at the end of the day, and the SICS calculates whether this request can be met while respecting injection or withdrawal timetable rights.
Scheduling
- Provisional scheduling:
Once the checks are completed, a provisional scheduled quantity is defined by the storage operator and matched against the quantities requested by the transmission operator.
The customer has, as it were, to request both the storage operator (injection or withdrawal in a group) and the transmission operator (collection and delivery on a PITS). The quantities requested from the storage operator and transmission operator must be identical for a given PITS.
- Scheduling:
The scheduled report corresponds to the result of the matching between the storage operator’s provisional scheduling and the transmission operator’s.
The storage operator then issues a scheduling notice to inform the customer after 6pm on day D for D+1 for all quantities requested (base + conditional + day-ahead).
The storage operator then schedules the quantities for injection or withdrawal. If there is a mismatch between the storage operator’s provisional scheduling and the transmission operator’s, the "lesser of” rule applies first (i.e. choosing the lowest provisional scheduled value). If after this matching, the quantity does not fit the contractual rights, then the scheduled value will be that of the last matching report.
Completion
At the end of day D, the last scheduled quantity is deemed to have been completed.
The inventory is updated in the SICS along with the daily injection and withdrawal capacity.
Gas-flow direction reversal
A customer can modify his request until there is a reversal of direction, provided that this latter complies with the conditions given above, and that the modification does not involve a physical change of direction.
Maintenance
Storengy tries to minimise the impact of Storage Facility engineering work on its Customers, and does not schedule any maintenance that might affect withdrawal during the Winter.
To display the list of maintenance operations scheduled up click here.
Handling congestion
- Contractual congestion:
Managing congestion is defined in Article 9 of Decree no. 2006-1034 concerning access to underground natural-gas storage. In the event of congestion, access to underground natural-gas storage is organised as a seven-level priority scheme: storage rights for the least priority customers are then reduced in order to unblock the congestion. The top two levels of priority concern domestic customers and customers providing public services.
There is currently no contractual congestion in France. There is sufficient available storage capacity to meet all the needs of priority customers as defined by Decree no. 2006-1034.
Moreover, in conformity with the recommendations in the Guidelines for Good TPA Practice for Storage System Operators, since 1 April 2006 Storengy has offered its customers an interruptible injection or withdrawal service for a storage group according to the level of requests made by customers the day before – i.e. the 'day-ahead' service.
Each day, Storengy notifies customers about the available injection (or withdrawal) capacity for the day-ahead offer, under the conditions given in Article 4.8 of Operating Procedures in the Contract.
Storengy also facilitates capacity trading on its secondary market platform.
- Physical (or technical congestion):
Should storage capacity become partially unavailable in a storage group (e.g. due to unplanned maintenance work), Storengy cascades the impact across all users in the storage group in question, in proportion to the individual user’s storage capacity.
Managing physical congestion is described in the general conditions of the storage contract (§13: Force Majeure and §7: Maintenance).
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