Portugal

General Manager

Miguel Jiménez Fernández is the NUS Consulting Group's Operations Manager in the Iberian Peninsula. Miguel earned a degree in Telecommunications Engineering at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. After several years working in the telecommunications sector he joined NUS Consulting at its Barcelona office as a Consultant in 2002. Miguel transferred to NUS Consulting’s London office in 2003, where he had the opportunity to develop his career and acquire experience in the UK energy markets. In 2005 Miguel returned to Spain to open NUS Consulting Group’s Madrid office and develop the presence of the company in Spain and Portugal.

Overview

NUS Consulting commenced its operations in the Iberian Peninsula in 1993 through our office located in Barcelona. As the Spanish market deregulated and our client base grew we opened our office in Madrid in late 2005. More recently, as the liberalisation of the energy sector begun to accelerate in Portugal we opened our office in Lisbon in January 2010. Today, our Iberian operation employs 15-20 professionals who have the analysis tools, expertise and support from the rest of the group worldwide to provide our class-leading Energy Cost Management Services to clients located throughout Portugal and Spain.

The Portuguese energy markets began the process of deregulation in the mid nineties. Today, all consumers have the possibility to choose supplier in the Portuguese free market and new legislation being introduced is accelerating this liberalisation process. This is pushing consumers to move to such free market in order to enjoy better conditions than those in the regulated market. At the same time, although the incumbent suppliers continue to dominate the energy sector, many new suppliers are already offering their services in Portugal. As a result, there is a wide variety of prices available for consumers and the difference between the prices paid by different consumers for the same commodity has significantly increased. In addition to choice with regard to supplier there are also a wide variety of contracts and pricing structures available to consumers – e.g., fix price, bionomic single fixed price, all-inclusive bionomic price with time-discrimination, price index to the spot market, price index to the OMIP or other futures markets and various combinations thereof. The term and conditions of these agreements varies amongst suppliers and pricing structures. However, consumers are responsible for choosing the appropriate pricing structure, terms and conditions and delivery parameters in relations to their cost and risk tolerance/strategies.

As Portugal continues to be a net importer of primary energy, the wide volatility in the energy markets worldwide during the last few years has significantly impacted in the price of energy locally. Consumers have to deal with the risk introduced by this volatility and design their own purchases strategies in order to decide when to negotiate their contracts, and which term, price structure and other conditions better apply to their risk policies.

Our Lisbon office offers a full range of energy consulting services – procurement, audit, analysis, on-line data management, invoice validation and processing, research and consulting. Our local consulting staff possesses an intricate knowledge of the local energy markets and is focused on assisting clients in maximizing the available opportunities to reduce their overall energy costs. Our consulting staff draws on its own local experience as well as the experience of our other offices in providing our clients superior support, information and solutions to their energy management and cost reduction requirements.