Siemens is collaborating with Oracle, a global strategic cloud provider, on a solution designed to help energy suppliers to manage the data processing demands that will come with market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (HHS).

Siemens’ Elexon-approved half hourly data collection and aggregation services, powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s processing power, will let energy retailers access supplier agent services and gain insights from the HHS data, the manufacturer said in a press release.

The automated solution leverages Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to query and process readings from smart meters in 30-minute intervals in homes and small, non-domestic sites, helping to facilitate the transition to the smart grid. To date, volume and performance testing has been successfully conducted to 1.5million meters.

Ofgem, the government regulator for gas and electricity markets in Great Britain, confirmed plans for market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (HHS) in 2018 across the retail electricity market. The move, scheduled for completion by October 2025, is expected to unlock unprecedented levels of investment and innovation across the energy sector; accelerating the rollout of more personalised customer tariffs and ‘energy-as-a-service’ offerings which leverage the growth of renewable energy generation.

Domestic half hourly data collection should provide energy suppliers with transparency about the electricity usage of their customers, which should enable energy suppliers to offer more innovative energy products to help customers lower their bills, such as time-of-use tariffs, vehicle to grid and on-site renewable and battery storage solutions.

However, uptake during this elective phase has been slow, with many suppliers preferring to continue to settle meters non half hourly. The switchover and the task of taking meter readings every half hour from millions of customers will place new pressures on current data processing infrastructures, something that Siemens’ suite of solutions and processing power on OCI looks to offset, the manufacturer said in a press release.

Source: Siemens