Becoming your own BRP: the two gaps that stall the move

Advisory · BRP Operations

Over the past year, one of our most common conversations with energy suppliers has been about the same question: ''Should we become our own Balance Responsible Party?'' 

What's changed is not that suppliers want it. Most of the ones we speak to already believe the case is there. What's changed is that we've now watched enough of them go through the process to see clearly where it actually goes wrong, and it's rarely where people expect.

Here's the pattern.

A supplier reaches a certain scale and the third-party BRP arrangement stops making commercial sense. Too much margin is sitting with someone else, and the supplier wants its own hands on forecasting, nominations, and settlement. So far, so obvious. The economics point one way and everyone can see it.

Then the move stalls. And when we look at why, it almost never comes down to the business case being weak. It comes down to two things the business case can't answer on its own.

The proof gap

The first is proof. A historical, desk-based case can tell you the upside was there over the past twelve months. It cannot tell you that your own forecast, run live against real weather, real customer behaviour, and real market volatility, will actually deliver.

A model built on last year's data is always a little kinder than reality, because it never has to survive an actual live week of prices and weather. Finance and the board know this instinctively, which is why a transition funded on projections tends to stall at exactly the moment someone senior asks, "but how do we know it holds now, on our portfolio?"

What we've seen consistently is that this specific gap is what keeps suppliers dependent far longer than their own numbers justify.

The way through it is not a bigger spreadsheet. It's live evidence: running a forecast on your real portfolio in shadow mode, alongside your existing BRP, for long enough to see it against genuine market swings. That produces something a desk study never can: real performance, measured against what you're actually paying today, over the same stretch of time. That reframes the whole bet. Instead of committing capital on a hope, you spend a fraction of it to find out first. And sometimes the honest answer that comes back is "not yet." That's a fine outcome too.

A supplier who learns it isn't ready, before spending on a full transition, has saved itself a much more expensive lesson.

The readiness gap

The second thing the business case can't answer is readiness. This is the one suppliers underestimate most. Getting the BRP licence is a regulatory process with real technical and financial gating: the TSO accreditation path, secure message exchange, certificates, qualification scenarios, collateral arrangements. It's demanding, but it's knowable, and a partner who has done it before can carry most of that weight. The harder problem is what happens the day after go-live.

Getting the licence is not the same as being ready to run the position. We've watched suppliers treat go-live as the finish line, only to discover weeks in that nobody had actually agreed which calls were theirs to make and which belonged to whoever runs the desk day to day.

Settlement acceptance, dispute approval, corrections, nomination strategy, procurement, forecast accuracy: these are exactly the decisions that determine whether owning your own BRP pays off the way the business case said it would. Sort them out in advance and the position earns its keep from day one. Leave them for the team to work out live, and the pattern we keep seeing is a supplier that is technically its own BRP for months before it's actually capturing the margin that was supposed to be the whole point.

The suppliers who get this right build that readiness alongside licensing, not after it, so the team is already fluent in its role by the time the licence comes through, instead of learning it live under pressure.

A sequence, not a leap

So if there's one thing we'd want the market to take away, it's this. Becoming your own BRP is not a single leap, and treating it as one is what makes it feel risky. It's a sequence. You quantify the case, then you prove it live before committing capital, then you handle licensing and team readiness side by side, then you step into the position ready to capture its value from week one. Each step de-risks the next. The reason it feels like a cliff edge is that most suppliers have only ever been shown the destination, never the on-ramp.

Who you trust with the position

One last point that shapes how we advise on all of this. There is a real difference between a partner who also trades and one who doesn't. When your BRP provider runs its own positions in the market, its incentives and yours are not fully aligned. When your partner is a software and services company, the incentive is simple: get your forecasts right and keep your imbalance low. That alignment matters more than any single feature when you're deciding who to trust with your position, especially through a transition where so much rides on the advice being straight.

If you're weighing this move, start with your own numbers, then prove them live. Everything else follows from that.

Start where you actually are

Every supplier in this position sits somewhere different in the sequence. Some haven't quantified the case yet. Some have, and want to see it hold under real market conditions before committing any capital. Some are already through licensing and are quietly wondering whether their team is actually ready to run the position, not just hold it. Sometimes the honest answer is that you're not ready yet, or that this isn't a fit at all. You'll get that answer too.

Wherever you are in that sequence, the place to start is seeing what it actually looks like.

Discover Eneve's BRP as a Service solutions here.