Legal and Regulatory Challenges in the Development of 'Smart Electricity System' in Finland

Climate change mitigation targets push forward drastic changes in electricity systems and cause new challenges for electricity market actors. Smart grids are commonly seen to support the solving of these future challenges. This article focuses on the question, how smart grid and smart electricity system development have been integrated as targets to the Finnish electricity market legislation. Electricity distribution system operators (DSOs) are expected to carry the main burden in the smart grid development, so the focus will be in the regulation and legislation applied to them. However, smart grids only are not enough to create smart electricity system, but also smart markets are needed. As the encouraging elements in regulation for both smart grids and smart markets seem to be currently inadequate, a certificate system for smart grids will be suggested.