When your company is registered on GOPACS, your grid connection is pre-qualified and your capacity steering contract (CSC) has been added by your system operator, you are ready to participate in day-ahead congestion management. System operators can activate your contract to request you to adjust your feed-in or off-take according to the agreements in your CSC.
In this manual, you will read how you can set your company account to use the GOPACS Pull API for CSC activations and what is needed to receive the required capacity adjustments on the regarding grid connection when the contract has been activated by the system operator.
Looking for information about CLC?
A Capacity Limitation Contract (CLC) is a type of Capacity Control Contract (CSC). If you have a CLC, the information on this page is also relevant to you. The difference is that a CLC always relates to restricting transport capacity. A CSC can also include agreements on capacity utilisation, or a combination of both. Over time, CSC will replace CLC.
⚠ Note: The GOPACS Pull API is currently only available for CSC activations, not for ATR activations (TDTR and VVTR). If your company also participates in ATR, you can currently only use ‘Own UFTP Implementation’ for both products. At this time, it is not possible to use different activation handling methods for CSC and ATR.
What is the GOPACS Pull API?
The GOPACS Pull API is a new and third option for handling activations on your contract. Until March 2026, only the two options ‘GOPACS UI’ and ‘Own UFTP implementation’ were available. Because building an UFTP implementation is not an evident option for several companies, we have created this new option. This option is easier to implement but still can be automated within your company processes in order to prevent manual actions per activation.
When using the GOPACS Pull API, GOPACS will process accepting the contract activation from the system operator automatically. As a Pull API using company you are required to request the result of the contract activation by API at least every hour.
The results of the activations are presented in the API response as ‘Effective limits’. These ‘Effective limits’ contain a ‘minPower’ and a 'maxPower' per ISP (Imbalance Settlement Period — a 15-minute settlement interval) between which you are required to keep your feed-in or off-take capacity. Details are in the API specification which can be found on the Swagger URLs below.
The steps in the instruction manual are described in table form to clearly define the steps. The following columns are defined.
Column | Definition |
|---|---|
Step | Order in which the steps are needed to be executed. |
Description | Describes in detail what happens in the step. |
Is there a term that is unclear, the explanation is probably in our Glossary.
For Dutch the glossary is located here: Begrippenlijst - GOPACS
For English the glossary is located here: Glossary - GOPACS
More manuals can be found here: Manuals
If you need help or have questions, you can find our details here: Contact
1 – Preparation: Set you company account to use the GOPACS Pull API
Step | Description |
|---|---|
1 | Log in on the GOPACS-platform
Open the authentication-app on your mobile phone for the one-time code of your GOPACS-account.  Enter this ‘One-time code’ and click ‘Sign in’.  You are now logged in. |
2 | Set to use the GOPACS Pull API for handling contract activations Go via the menu on the left to ‘My company details’ and then click the tab ‘UFTP’. Select as ‘Method to use for CSC activations’ the option: ‘Use the GOPACS Pull API’. You will then see an opt-in checkbox appearing. By clicking this checkbox:
Then click ‘Save Changes’.  |
3 | Implement requesting the effective limits by API on an hourly basis In addition to setting up your account to use the GOPACS Pull API for handling contract activations, you also need to align your operational process accordingly. You must ensure that the results of contract activations by the system operator are retrieved through the GOPACS Pull API at least once every hour. The API provides the ‘Effective limits’ for a grid connection and period caused by contract activations. The API specification can be found here:
You are required to pull this API at least once every hour, 24/7, for each grid connection EAN for which your company has a capacity steering contract. The response contains the contract activations for the requested EAN (grid connection) and period. For each ISP (Imbalance Settlement Period — a 15-minute settlement interval), the required minimum and maximum power limits are provided. In addition, the response includes an overview of all activations within each ISP. If multiple activations exist within the same ISP, the most recent activation is leading. After implementing this hourly request, you are ready to use the GOPACS Pull API. |
4 | Testing requesting effective limits There is no specific testing facility. You can test your API request by performing a request to the API and see if it results in 200 OK with an empty content. For testing the content itself, you can use the API specification as input for mocking for tests on your application. |
2 – What happens when your contract gets activated by the grid operator?
Step | Description |
|---|---|
1 | When your contract gets activated by the system operator, the contacts of the company will receive an e-mail with link to the details of the request.  Where GOPACS GUI users must accept the request through clicking the link to open the details of the request and then clicking the accept button, by using the GOPACS Pull API, you do not need to do this. GOPACS will automatically accept the request for you after which the system operator can finalize it. You can still click the link in the e-mail and see that the request already has been ‘Finalized’, no action is needed on the opened page. |
2 | Your implemented hourly request to the GOPACS Pull API will automatically receive the resulting Effective Limits for the grid connection. Simply clicking the link in the email and steering the asset based on that information does not meet the requirements for using the GOPACS Pull API. Retrieving the data through the API at least once every hour is mandatory. These API requests will be logged, allowing system operators to verify whether the required requests are being performed on time and in accordance with the agreed process. |
3 – Overview of contract activations
Step | Description |
|---|---|
1 | On the GOPACS-platform, you can see the activations on your contract(s) via the screen ‘Conversations’ (NL: ‘Afroepen'). This page shows all contract activations and their status. You can navigate to this screen via the menu on the left: go to ‘Capacity Steering Contracts’ (NL: ‘Capaciteitssturingscontracten') and then select ‘Conversations’ (ENG: ‘Afroepen'). Capacity limiting contracts activations are also shown on this page. On the GOPACS-platform, these are named ‘capacity steering contracts’.  |
Step | Link | Description |
|---|---|---|
1 | Swagger API Specification - Production environment | |
2 | Swagger API Specification - Acceptance environment - for testing |
