Market Communication in the Energy Industry: It's Complicated
The more digital and small-scale the energy industry, the more important market communication becomes
More and more market participants are exchanging more and more data in increasingly complex processes. Market communication in the energy market is therefore becoming more complicated - but it can also be automated and made more efficient by clever IT solutions. Reliability, performance and flexibility are in demand.
If No Data Flows, No Energy Flows Either
No functioning power supply without clean interaction: While power generation and consumption must be in balance in the energy network so that frequency and voltage are correct at all times, correct market communication is indispensable from a logistical and commercial point of view as a clock generator. A functioning data exchange is essential for energy producers, traders, suppliers as well as network operators and metering point operators in order to carry out typical business processes such as master data changes, supplier changes, meter reading transmission or network usage billing automatically.
Market Communication as Basic Functionality for the Energy Industry
Introduced in 2006 in the course of the so-called unbundling (separation of network and sales in energy supply companies), the new communication processes have become the standard. However, further developments to be carried out every six months repeatedly cause stress in software houses and among market players: in the course of the introduction of the new MaKo 2020 on December 1, 2019, market communication was the subject of much discussion. Since then, there has been a division of responsibility between distribution system operators and metering point operators, and ultimately the star-shaped distribution of metered values to all other market participants. Although the energy industry has now largely internalized the new processes, the energy market is changing rapidly as a result of the energy transition and digitization. More and more market participants are networked with each other, and the need for communication is increasing. Not only is the number of transactions constantly increasing, but the processes are also becoming more complex and thus more time-consuming to handle.
For experts in the energy sector, market communication - especially MaKo 2020 and, in the future, Redispatch 2.0 and MaKo 2022 - represents one of the biggest changes in the process landscape of energy suppliers. IT systems will have to be adapted just as much as processes. Despite clear regulations, there is always room for interpretation, which in practice leads to data inconsistencies and requires time-consuming bilateral clarifications. Building up the relevant expertise and keeping the systems up to date is becoming more and more of a burden for companies. At the same time, cost pressure in the market is increasing.
We Implement Market Communication Uncomplicated From the Cloud
We think so: In the future, market communication should be a basic functionality that runs simply, reliably and automatically in the background, so that companies in the energy industry can concentrate on their actual business. That's why we now offer market communication as a system-independent cloud solution. We combine technical and functional market communication to provide end-to-end process support and monitoring.
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