The FINANCIAL — Accenture has been selected by Atrias, a joint initiative of Belgium’s six electricity and gas distribution grid operators, to build, deploy and manage a single clearing house application to help centralize and structure data exchange among the Belgian energy sector players.
This new market model will help Belgian utilities to prepare for the low-carbon energy transition and the digitization of the sector by supporting new developments like smart meters and rising decentralized power-generation. The realization of a single central clearing house will increase cost efficiency by enabling grid operators to share fixed IT infrastructure costs, simplify compliance, improve process transparency and standardize processes for the exchange of information between all market parties, according to Accenture.
“In a rapidly changing energy marketplace, there’s a need in Belgium to manage our energy distribution and related data in a more efficient and flexible way. Moving to one central market model, will enable valuable synergies between network operators and energy retailers, which can help facilitate the creation of new customer products and services and boost competition,” said Stéphane D’hose, program manager at Atrias. “We selected Accenture to manage this project based on its consulting track record in the utilities industry, as well as its experience with transformational system implementation and its knowledge of the proposed software solutions.”
Accenture’s consultants helped Atrias navigate the technology ecosystem to select solutions that most suited the organization’s business needs. Accenture will implement the Ferranti MECOMS meter data management and customer information system and deploy on top of it an integration layer webMethods of Software AG’s new Digital Business Platform. These components will run on a private cloud delivered by Proximus, based in two of their highly secured data centers in Belgium. It will then work with Avanade to implement a public cloud solution from Microsoft Azure, underpinned by the Accenture Cloud Platform, to migrate and consolidate the energy market data into one clearing hub.
“This project will create a centralized and flexible solution that will enable Atrias to manage the Belgian energy market data in a more efficient and transparent way, using real-time information,” said Eric Jost, managing director, Accenture’s utilities industry group in Belgium and Luxemburg. “With ever-increasing complexity in grid operations and more demand from customers for personalized products and services, a cloud-first solution will allow new market dynamics and value creation through an improved energy market model.”
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