Northern Ireland Electricity has invested an undisclosed sum in a software system that will manage the bidding and settling of energy transactions in the forthcoming North and South single electricity market.
This year the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will move to become a single electricity market.
Beginning in November all market participates – generators and suppliers – will be required to operate within the mandatory pool market, which will mean new market rules and timelines for the bidding and settling of energy transactions.
Northern Ireland Electricity, a subsidiary of Viridian Group, has been building a data aggregation system that manages generation and consumption information from a range of generator and consumer categories that it will provide to the single market operator and market participants.
To make this happen the company has invested in the Lodestar Customer Choice Suite following what it describes as a rigorous selection.
“The single electricity market initiative poses a number of technical challenges to our business,” said Caroline Murphy, general manager of group technology at Northern Ireland Electricity.
“Of particular importance to Northern Ireland Electricity was Lodestar’s proven track record in delivering its solution rapidly to meeting challenging market-opening timescales,” Murphy said.
The information the system generates will be a critical element of the all-island market, allowing the market operator to produce settlement results.
The system will support aggregation processes for up to 800,000 of the company’s customers in Northern Ireland.
By John Kennedy
