Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity

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The Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) was responsible for coordinating the operation and expanding the European network network, which supplies more than 400 million consumers. The last members were 29 transmission system operators from 24 countries.
Since 1 July 2009, the organisational tasks of UCTE have been taken over by the overarching European Association of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E).

Coordination organizations in other regions with similar tasks are COMELEC in the North African sector and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

History

The predecessor organization of UCTE was the one on the 23rd. May 1951 in Paris at the suggestion of the then OEEC founded (UCPTE). UCPTE was transformed into UCTE in 1999 due to the liberalisation of the electricity market. The UCTE network, like virtually all electrical energy networks, is designed as a three-phase high-voltage transmission network.

The founding members of UCPTE in 1951 were: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland. In 1987, the UCPTE network was expanded by four new countries: Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal. With the so-called synchronization of the Eastern European network system CENTREL in 1995, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary also became members of UCPTE.

On 10 October 2004, the south-eastern European network area of UCTE, which was separated by the effects of the war in 1991 and extends from Croatia via Greece to Romania, was reconnected with the Central European network. The prerequisite for this was extensive repair work and new construction of substations and pipelines, especially in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Since 2009, the organisational and administrative tasks of ENTSO-E, which comprises network operators from different interconnected networks, have been taken over. However, the technical limits of the interconnected networks and the former UCTE have remained unchanged and thus electrical interconnected networks such as those of UCTE and the Scandinavian states cannot continue to be directly electrically connected in the interconnected network of NORDEL. Although the interconnected networks have the same nominal value of 50 Hz with respect to the network frequency, specific phase positions of the network frequency are different, i.e. the networks are asynchronous to one another. Electric energy between these interconnected networks can only be transmitted in the form of direct current via high voltage direct current transmission lines (HVDCs) or short DC couplings (GKK).

Members
Before the transition to ENTSO-E in 2009, transmission system operators from 24 countries were last represented in UCTE:

The Scandinavian states are members of NORDEL. Denmark is a member of both UCTE and d