Siemens has joined forces with global strategic cloud provider Oracle to offer energy suppliers a high-performance processing solution.
This is to help suppliers to better manage the data processing demands of market wide Half Hourly Settlement (HHS), with the automated solution leveraging Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to query and process readings from smart meters in 30-minute intervals in homes and small non-domestic sites.
To date, volume and performance testing has been successfully conducted to 1.5 million meters, although this can be scaled further.
Alongside this, a range of analytics tools are also on offer, including the Settlement Analytics tool, which processes registration and interval data and then applies in depth analytics to reveal the ‘real’ costs of settlement options at an MPAN level.
It comes after Ofgem approved rolling out HHS across the electricity market in Britain in April, with this enabling more accurate signals to be sent to suppliers from domestic customers throughout the day, in turn allowing suppliers to offer new tariffs and products that will be able to encourage more flexible energy use.
Specifically, it could boost energy products such as time-of-use tariffs, vehicle-to-grid and on-site renewable and battery storage solutions.
The same month it launched a consultation into the implementation and governance arrangements of the introduction of HHS.
However, the task of taking meter readings every half hour from millions of customers will place new pressures on current data processing infrastructures, Siemens said, with this new collaboration with Oracle designed to offset this.
“Mandated Half Hourly Settlement will create exponential growth in meter data for energy suppliers to manage at a time when personalised tariffs and energy-as-a-service will be mainstream,” said Nick Jones, Half Hourly Settlement lead at Siemens, adding that the company is urging suppliers to work with partners “at speed and scale to understand the opportunity interval data presents”.
