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MEETING 5-MINUTE SETTLEMENT
REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS
On 28 November 2017, the AEMC made a final rule to change the settlement period for the electricity spot price from thirty minutes to five minutes, with the changes to be implemented by late 2021. 5-minute settlement (5MS) provides a better price signal for investment in fast response technologies, such as batteries, new generation gas peaker plants and demand response. It is one of the biggest changes the Australian market has seen since the NEM was formed in the '90s, with the impacts on all those involved in the sector no less wide-ranging. THE CHALLENGE An Australian B2B Energy supplier needed to meet the regulatory changes for 5-minute settlement of interval metered customers and provide high availability, resilience and scalability required of mission-critical billing systems. One of the largest considerations with moving to 5-minute settlement is the increase of data. With standing data changes and additional meter data to manage, Gentrack needed to handle the increased data load with around 70 different industry procedures affected and around six times more meter data to manage and store. Choosing an accurate, market compliant software solution that can handle the increased data load and keep the mission critical meter to cash processes running within the available processing window is crucial in ensuring retailers and energy suppliers can make a smooth transition to 5-minute settlement.
Gentrack’s Meter Data Services on AWS is a fully managed cloud service that supports the ingestion, analysis, and querying of large volumes of meter data. It is designed to be used by multiple systems within the utility’s enterprise including Gentrack’s Billing System and other systems to support critical workflows and processes and provides: • Efficient storage of meter data • Processing of large complex account workloads • Turning detailed consumption data into actionable insight The product facilitates low latency access to meter data, aggregates energy usage, and gives controlled access to meter data, allowing providers the ability to scale using native cloud services with data while supporting all interval based NUOS calculations in the NEM. It is designed not just for 5-minute interval data, but potentially finer increments, through the ability to scale using native cloud services and can execute many processes concurrently.
THE SOLUTION Gentrack’s approach THE TAKEAWAY to building cloud The performance services to deliver and scalability needed functional components to meet data increases strategically from 5MS also creates provides value to the opportunity to customers in ever realise some efficiency changing regulatory improvements for environments. retailers. The development With this of Gentrack’s Meter implementation, there Data Services on AWS was a 25 per cent predates the industry's timeframe reduction 5-minute settlement for processing meter regulatory changes. data and associated GENTRACK METER DATA SERVICES: CUSTOMER IMPACT However, the scheduling invoicing cycles, of the 5MS industry program fast-tracked the urgency and allowing the retailer to bill their customers a day ahead of implementation of this service to market, with the need to the previous process. This pulls forward significant cashprocess large volumes of interval data as a by-product of the flow for the critical first of the month billing cycle, and for industry-wide changes in Australia. subsequent cycles. For more information, please visit www.gentrack.com
UTILITY • NOVEMBER 2021
WWW.UTILITYMAGAZINE.COM.AU
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