+ As a Railway Undertaking (RU), in order to freely choose your electricity supplier, you will need to isolate the energy flows between you and your Infrastructure Manager(s), and assign them to your respective balance responsible parties.

Beneficiaries

• Railway Infrastructure Managers (IM)
• Railway Undertakings (RU)

What the service provides and how to benefit from it

The “railway accounting” service allows a Railway Undertaking (RU) to benefit from an energy accounting service totally or partially based on the data from the energy metering systems installed on the traction units it operates. This allows accurate billing of consumption by electricity suppliers.

This service is offered both to French Railway Infrastructure Managers (IMs), connected to the grid and holding a CART-Consumer contract, and to RUs using the infrastructures of these IMs with all or part of its railway vehicles equipped with energy metering systems, whether these RUs wish to be supplied by an electricity market supplier (RU-Market) or through the IM (RU-RUE).

Through this service, 

• Within the scope of the RU, RTE accounts the energy flows based on:
  • the data from the meters on board the RU’s traction units including the geolocation data; 
  • where applicable, the train-run data collection transmitted by the IM with the agreement of the RU; 
  • and finally, where applicable, the consumption estimates of non-metered equipment transmitted by the IM. 
• RTE also accounts the IM’s energy flows, based on RTE’s metering data and deducting the energies of the RU-market.  

The service is modular. Depending on the option subscribed simultaneously by the 2 parties (IM and RU) with RTE, data streams are individualized and published by RTE:

• Option 1: the energies accounted by RTE for each RU-market and each IM are linked to the perimeter of the balance responsible party selected by each company.  Where relevant and during a transitional period, the IM declares to RTE the energies of the RU-market to be linked.
• Option 2: the energies accounted by RTE for each RU-RUE are transmitted to the supplier (the IM).

RUs which have subscribed to this service can access various data provided by RTE, throughout the data processing stages: from the acquisition of data from the on-board meter to the aggregation of energies at the scale of the RU.

How to subscribe?

For the RU: 

• Review the documents associated with the contract.
• Sign a contract with RTE specific to rail metering: opt for option A, and choose payment methods (cheque, wire transfer or direct debit).  Signing the contract constitutes compliance with IS Terms and Conditions.
• If the RU wishes to choose a balance responsible other than the IM: designate a balance responsible party by providing an attachment agreement (Appendix 3.A5 of Chapter 3 "Balance Responsible Party System" of the Market Rules).

For the IM: 

• Review the documents associated with the contract.
• Sign a contract with RTE specific to railway accounting service:  opt for option B, and choose payment methods (cheque, wire transfer or direct debit). Signing the contract constitutes compliance with IS Terms and Conditions.
• If a RU, running on its infrastructure, has chosen a balance responsible other than the IM:
  • Accept the CART update , to take into account the metered railway undertakings in the flow metering formula; 
  • Inform the balance responsible party of the subscription to the accounting service.

If an IM has more than one accounted RU, it must subscribe to an accounting service with the same number of options as the number of RUs accounted in its perimeter. In the case where a RU is accounted for several IMs, it subscribes to the accounting service with the same number of options as there are IMs.

Conditions

Railway Undertaking: 

• Subscribe to the railway accounting service (option 1-A or option 2-A) for a minimum of 1 year.

Infrastructure Manager: 

• Hold a Consumer CART contract
• Subscribe to the railway accounting service (option 1-B option 2-B) for a minimum of 1 year.

Service tariff or fee

For IMs

The charges consist of:

• A fee for management costs on subscription to the service
• A set annual management fee
• If applicable, extra charges for declarations outside the time limit may apply 

For RUs

The charges consist of:

• A fee for management costs on subscription to the service
• A set annual management fee
• If applicable, extra charges for declarations outside the time limit
• If applicable, a fee for management costs related to the modification/reconfiguration of the service (including a change of the balance responsible party)
• An accounting fee based on the number of remote energy management systems

Reference documentation

• Deliberation no. 2022-27 of 27 January 2022 concerning the pricing of ancillary services exclusively carried out by the public transmission system operator
• General Conditions and Special Conditions template
• Documents related to the contract

Access to following document in the library:
Market Rules relating to the Balance Responsible Party system (Chapter 3 of the Market Rules) available in the "Mechanisms and Optional Services" section / "Market rules- valid" sub-section

Contact(s)

For subscriptions or information, please contact your usual account manager or the generic email address of the customer service department for your geographical area.