Brady Introduces New Service for I-SEM Settlement Management
On the 1st October 2018, I-SEM replaced the wholesale Single Electricity Market (SEM) in all of Ireland. The I-SEM was brought in “following an instruction to the SEM Committee from the Irish and Northern Irish authorities to develop a new set of electricity trading arrangements that would meet the requirements of the EU Target Model.”[1] At the same time, the I-SEM was expected to help realize increased access to cheaper power, a more open and efficient Pan-European market and to provide the basis for further market development including intraday, forwards, futures and derivative markets to help improve risk management. However, in delivering on some of these benefits, the I-SEM also needs to offer a level playing field for all participating in the market. An aspect of this is timely and accurate settlement.
Last week, I talked with Anne Elliot (Senior Product Manager) and Maurycy Widera (Software Engineering Manager) of Brady PLC about its new Energy Settlement Manager product that Brady has launched. According to Ms. Elliot, The Energy Settlement Manager (ESM) is an energy (electricity) settlements reconciliation application, which allows market participants to verify the invoiced charges received from the electricity market operator. She explained that the solution is targeted at I-SEM market participants that receive invoices and it helps them reconcile all charges and payments relating to the purchase and sale of electricity in three I-SEM markets – Balancing (BALIMB), Capacity (CRM), and Market Operator (MO). SEMO is responsible for producing both purchase invoices (buying electricity from a generator) and sales invoices (selling wholesale electricity), and as such market participants need to ensure that the invoice values they receive are correct. “The solution essentially has three parts to it,” she told me. “Firstly, it forms a repository for a lot of the market messages allowing users to do data analytics on this information, secondly, it has a shadow settlements aspect downloading daily statements and weekly or monthly invoices to calculate charges and finally it acts as an invoice register.”
“The web-based solution can be hosted in the cloud by Brady or hosted on premises so, from a technical installation perspective, everything is fast, cost-effective and efficient,” Mr. Widera said. In essence, it is another service from Brady and fits quite well with the idea of developing services with discrete and purposeful functionality that can run alongside other business systems.
With limited time for review of invoices, the ability to automatically download invoices and verify them is a key benefit of the system according to Brady while other valuable information can be used to inform PnL, review performance and spot business opportunities.
ABB also has capabilities in delivering specific I-SEM functionality with its nMarket product and I-SEM add on modules and, to our knowledge, only ABB and Brady have specific off the shelf solutions for that market currently. If I-SEM develops the way it is envisaged to over time, the number of other software solutions will undoubtedly grow but for now, it seems Brady and ABB enjoy a first mover advantage.
[1] http://www.eirgridgroup.com/customer-and-industry/i-sem/
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