July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Christian Kunze pays French farmers to install camouflaged, shoebox-sized "power stalkers'' in fields near nuclear stations owned by Electricite de France SA, collecting data the world's biggest utility says is a secret.
His company, Powermonitor, plans to sell information about reactor starts and stops in France less than three years after Kunze fended off spying charges from EDF's German affiliate. Banks, hedge funds and traders will pay for such data to gain an edge in continental Europe's $565 billion power market.
EDF is at the center of a battle over the disclosure of data Citigroup Inc. says may save European electricity users billions of euros a year. The state-owned utility refuses to release information on plant operations that its biggest competitors, E.ON AG and RWE AG, began reporting last year. Now the European Union may force the company to be more transparent.
"Generation is the most valuable piece of information there is and we want this in real-time or near real-time,'' said Paul Dawson, head of regulatory affairs at Citigroup, which began trading European power last year.
Such data is important because prices hinge on the amount of power being produced at any time, given that electricity, unlike other commodities, can't be stored. National markets are linked, so unexpected supply cuts in France tend to mean that prices soar in neighboring markets. Those with information about outages can anticipate the jump.
'Substantial Savings'
Increased transparency could bring "substantial savings'' for consumers by boosting competition in wholesale markets, said Peter Styles, chairman of the electricity committee at the European Federation of Energy Traders.
"The primary obligation should fall on generators themselves'' to publish more information, he said.
In December 2005, EDF's German affiliate, Energie Baden- Wuerttemberg AG, went to court, claiming Kunze, 40, was engaged in industrial espionage by monitoring output from the Neckarwestheim nuclear plant in southwest Germany. The Heilbronn district court ruled for Kunze.
Paris-based EDF, the largest power generator, doesn't release information from individual plants because it is "commercially sensitive,'' said Carole Trivi, a utility spokeswoman. The company does provide national aggregate data daily by fuel type. Trivi declined to comment on Citigroup's cost estimate.
EnBW has no plans to publish data broken down by plant unless it's part of a Europe-wide program, said Friederike Eggstein, a spokeswoman for the Karlsruhe-based utility.
New Regulations
The European Parliament on June 18 approved new laws designed to create a network of European transmission-system operators whose task will be to improve the electricity markets, partly by requiring the release of more generation data. Member states still have to endorse the proposals.
A merger between European Energy Exchange AG and Powernext SA, the power exchanges in Germany and France, may also help push through more stringent French rules, forcing EDF to report the same data as E.ON and RWE.
"As long as France keeps playing this game, the market isn't functioning properly and in the end it's hitting the consumers'' because trading is less efficient, said Fredrik Bodecker, managing director of hedge fund company Nordic Commodity Funds AB in Stockholm. The company runs a Nordic electricity fund and may start one for continental power, fuels and carbon permits as early as October.
Safety Issue
The lack of operational data also affects safety by making it difficult to advise the public about when nuclear fuel will be shipped to and from the plants, said Frederic Marillier, a nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace France. EDF's Trivi declined to comment.
"It's really a big problem that even basic information isn't available,'' Marillier said.
The Nordic region and the U.K. are the only western European markets that require power companies to report availability and output in near real-time. Nordic utilities have to disclose halts as much as three years ahead. Spain's Atomic Energy Regulator publishes operational updates for the country's reactors on its Web site.
In the absence of broader disclosure, traders have turned to Powermonitor and larger Genscape Inc., the only provider of real- time information on EDF's 58 reactors. Powermonitor plans to start its French service in September, Kunze said.
Such data comes at a cost. Genscape, which monitors plants in seven European countries and the U.S., charges as much as 900,000 euros ($1.41 million) a year for its service, according to traders who declined to be identified because the price is confidential. Christian Essers, a Genscape managing director in Amsterdam, declined to comment on pricing.
Billions at Stake
The value of individual power plant data across the EU "could easily run into billions of euros every year,'' for consumers, said Citigroup's Dawson, who couldn't provide a more specific estimate.
Dawson based his calculation on the benefits to consumers of having real-time data on natural gas deliveries to the U.K., which has been estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds a year. The value of timely power plant information would be much more, he said.
"This isn't about finding out private information about the companies,'' he said. "It's about getting a picture of the whole power system.''