With a view to the increasing number of cross-border transactions implemented by more and more participants at the European Electricity Market, the processes of the international electronic data exchanges have to be improved. The European Transmission System Operators (ETSO) “Electronic Data Interchange”, entitled to elaborate a new pan-European harmonized schedule format(ESS - ETSO Scheduling System). One part of the work over this new system is to provide for the identification of the participants at the electricity markets all round Europe, by putting in place unified rules, called Energy Identification Coding scheme (EIC). Association has established Task Force 14 –  ETSO has set a specific  administration structure, called ETSO Central Issuing Office (CIO), to manage and maintain the identification. Together with this, ETSO has entrusted Local Issuing Offices (LIO)  with the activities to issue and manage EIC codes.

In Bulgaria, ESO EAD is entitled to be the Local Issuing Office and thus the company issues and manages the list with the Bulgarian EIC codes. ETSO has assigned to the Bulgarian Local Issuing Office the Office Code 32. Therefore the first two characters of all EIC codes issued by ESO EAD begin with 32. All electricity market participants willing to participate in the cross-border electricity exchanges must obtain an EIC code, which is valid all across Europe.

 

The EIC codeis a series of 16 symbols. The first 2 of them refer to the Office Code of the Issuing Office. The third character describes whether it concerns a party in the cross-border exchanges (X), a control area (Y), an electricity metering point (Z) or a resource object (W) for production units, industrial consumers, pumping stations, capacitor banks, synchronous compensators, FACT devices, etc. The following 12 characters refer to the relevant market participant, e.g. mentioning his name. The final character is a check symbol. It is defined on the basis of the previous 15 characters by means of a special check algorithm. Furthermore, it enables the validation of the entire 16-characters code, confirming its correctness.

 

 

All market participants willing to apply for an EIC code with regard to participate in the cross-border exchanges shall meet the criteria laid down in the Rules for Electricity Trading, issued by SWERC.

In order to obtain an EIC code, the participant shall fulfill the following documents and send them to ESO EAD by post (Sofia 1407, 51 James Bourchier blvd, fax: +359 2 96 26 129) and e-mail (tsoplan@ndc.bg).

The data submited in the application form are transmitted also to the central ETSO data base, where the data of all Issuing Offices are collected. Part of the data (name of the company, short name, EIC, e-mail-address, EAN, etc.) are published on the ESO EADweb site in the form of a list with the codes issued.

Additional information on the EIC is available at the ETSO TF EDI web site: www.edi.etso-net.org

 

Fields in the EIC Code Application Form
Company Name	Full name of company Maximum of 70 alphanumeric characters. Special characters with diacritical signs shall be avoided.
Display Name	Name to be used for data processing (to be displayedin lists, searches, sorting). The name shall be unique and shall contain no more than 16 alphanumeric characters. The only characters permitted are the plain Latin letters from 'A' to 'Z', '-', '_', and the figures form '0' to '9'.
Address Line 1-2-3	Address Maximum of 70 alphanumeric characters.
Postal Code	Post code Maximum of 10 alphanumeric characters.
City	Town or locality of the company office Maximum of 35 alphanumeric characters.
Country	Country identification code under ISO 3166, where the company office is located. 2 alphanumeric characters.
Contact Person	Person to contact Family name and first name of contact representing the company. Maximum of 70 alphanumeric characters.
Telephone	Contact's telephone number. Must be given in following format: '+country.id (local prefix) local number'. Example number for Bulgaria: +359 2 981 86 17. Maximum of 35 alphanumeric characters.
Fax	Contact's fax number. The format must be the same as that described for the telephone number ( see above). Maximum of 35 alphanumeric characters.
E-mail	Address to which e-mail concerning the company should be sent. Maximum of 70 alphanumeric characters.
EAN Code	EAN code(European code for the type of the goods, analogical to the ЕИК in Bulgaria. In case that the company does not possess such a code, the field shall be left empty). 13 alphanumeric characters.
Intracommunity VAT Cod	VAT code (Value Added Tax, e. g. БУЛСТАТ in Bulgaria) without spaces and separators between characters. Maximum of 14 alphanumeric characters.
Company Function	Brief description of its role at the electricity market, according to the ETSO roles model (Balance Responsible Party,International Trader, Balance Group Coordinator). Maximum of 700 alphanumeric characters.
Date	Date of the application, in the format 'yyyy-mm-dd'. Maximum of 10 alphanumeric characters.

 

 

 

Remark: ESO EAD shall not bear any responsibility for changes made in the documents by the users.