Features of of Transmission Tariffs in Europe

The recent opening to competition of all European electricity markets has resulted in a separation of energy prices (potential for competitive supply) from network service tariffs (transmission and distribution networks). Thus, the fees collected by network managers can now be compared amongst themselves. Such comparisons are all the more important since these activities remain monopolies, providing few points of contrast on the national scale. Nonetheless, many practical and methodological difficulties remain to overcome before these comparisons reveal the underlying economic and institutional drivers of pricing behaviour. Part of the problem arises from the diversity of national institutional frameworks for the transmission activity. The other principal difficulty involves gathering reliable and comparable data.