Balancing system BILAS for the day-ahead electricity market for Západoslovenská distribučná, a.s.

In relation to increasing volume of measured data in Zápodoslovenská distribučná, a.s. (ZSD), as intelligent IMS measurement systems were implemented, ZSD decided to divert the main data flow of measured profile data out of the SAP IS-U environment. For balancing processes in separate system that is not connected to SAP, company chose a new balancing system for the day-ahead electricity market. Purpose of the project called the BILAS was implementation of the original product of SFÉRA, a.s.– XMtrade^®|BIS. 

The new balancing system enables fulfilling legislative obligation to deploy IMS electrometers for more than 250,000 delivery points by the end of 2021. The system became a source of final data for balancing in the electricity market and invoicing processes. It helped optimize and consolidate business and IT processes related to metering and reading of meters, and significantly simplified functioning of the SAP system in order to support native core-SAP IS-U ZSD functionality and reduce SAP licensing fees. As a part of deployment of the product was integration of the XMtrade®|BIS system into the ZSD IT environment as well as services related to ensuring the gradual transition of functionality from the existing IT environment to the new one (migration of the current solution and data from SAP IS-U to XMtrade ®|BIS).  

Deployment of the new XMtrade^®|BIS balancing system for ZSD enabled:

• possibility of easy scalability of the solution depending on the penetration rate of smart metering,
• provision of data for the integration platform to streamline data communication between the company's internal systems and external communication with partners in the energy market,
• provision of a balancing system with several times higher power capacity than the current state,
• improvement of supervision, monitoring and reporting of business and IT balancing processes,
• increasing the reliability of compliance with legislative requirements associated with the balancing and data exchange,
• introduction of structured business and IT reporting (for example, data quality from for reading of meters for the purposes of daily operational control and KPI management),
• clear graphical and numerical display of results of balancing,
• clear graphical display of measurements for selected groups of delivery points and periods,
• ability to create managerial and operational reporting and management dashboard,
• comparison of results of the balancing evaluation of the operator of the electricity market against the balancing in the XMtrade®|BIS system,
• comparison of pair metering provided by trading partners to market operator,
• management of the archive of documentation of balancing outputs.

The project and implementation team of SFÉRA, a.s. was led by an experienced analyst Patrik Rzavský, whose rich experience in the implementation of similar systems was a guarantee of high erudition and reliability of the entire solution. Implementation also included the transfer of know-how in the form of training, consultations, documentation and pilot/verification operations, which significantly contributed to the smooth start-up of the system into production and quick adaptation of satisfied users to the new environment.