Joint Allocation Office

The JAO is a joint service company of twenty Transmission System Operators (TSOs) from seventeen countries*. It will mainly perform the yearly, monthly and daily auctions of transmission rights on 27 borders in Europe and act as a fall-back for the European Market Coupling. After two years of careful and intensive preparation, the new allocation platform will be established on 1 September 2015 and initially perform auctions for the 2016 annual transmission rights. The JAO constitutes a merger of CAO Central Allocation Office GmbH located in Germany and CASC.EU S.A. located in Luxembourg. After the merger, both offices will run in parallel until the end of 2015 to ensure uninterrupted operation of the monthly and daily auctions on all borders concerned. All operations will be fully transferred to Luxembourg in the first quarter of 2016. The JAO substantially increases the efficiency and transparency of the electricity market in Europe by becoming the single point of contact for market participants, creating a liquid and almost Europe-wide platform for transmission rights allocation. Zbynek Boldiš (CEPS, Czech TSO), the chairman of the Joint Steering Team of the merger project, underlines: "With only one technical interface for managing most European borders, the JAO simplifies trading to more than 200 market participants and promises savings of several million Euros to the TSOs in the next years." As harmonisation of Auction Rules is an ongoing process, the JAO will adapt its services accordingly as soon as the Harmonised Auction Rules have been approved by all National Regulatory Agencies in charge. The JAO is open for other TSOs who can join by becoming shareholders of the JAO or just by using its services.