Erova Energy was founded in 2015 and headquartered in Dublin. Having created a bespoke trading platform with 24/7/365 operation capabilities, trading across the full energy spectrum (power, gas, and certificates), Erova has been able to offer bespoke route-to-market agreements in the UK and Ireland.
Mitsui & Co invested in the company in March 2018 as Erova continued its rapid growth so that it now holds 700 MW under management made up of 600 MW from direct agreements to trade the power of a wide range of generators and 100 MW of other supply trading agreements.
Erova trades energy for a wide range of asset owners. It was preparing to increase the trading, settlement and management services offered to its clients by providing balancing mechanism (BM) trading. It was also considering becoming a Virtual Lead Party (VLP) for bidding into BM and TERRE in the future as part of its growth plans.
Erova contacted Enegen, requesting an energy trading system designed to automate dispatch and scheduling functions for EDT and EDL. It also needed to be able to correlate Elexon settlements including the automation of operations through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Erova specifically needed:
Enegen's Genstar4 was able to deliver to all Erova Energy’s tender requirements for EDT, EDL, Generation Monitoring, ETR/REMIT reporting, industry settlements, VLP data submissions and automatic operation via APIs.
Genstar4 enabled Erova to submit EDT messages re availability, scheduling, and bid/offer spread data to NGE. It also enabled Erova to:
Enegen was also able to offer Erova the option of a fully hosted service for Genstar4, including EDT and EDL MPLS communication facilities, via its Tier 3+ data centres located in the East Midlands and London.
This EPC service incorporates a state-of-the-art Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRASS) solution using Zerto failover software between the two data centres.
The service delivers Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) within one hour. The Genstar4 hosted solution is compliant with dual redundancy and mains independence requirements as stipulated in V5 of the NGE communications standards document.
As a result of going live with Genstar4, Erova predicts it will be able to increase its BM trading activity considerably. For example, it has been working closely with Battery Storage developers to assess the merits of merchant storage with an intermittent marketplace.
Once Genstar4 was in place, another key technology partner of Erova Energy, Open Energi, saw immediate benefits of integration as David Hill, Director of Open Energi, explained:
"Open Energi is excited to integrate our Dynamic Demand 2.0 Trader with the Genstar4 platform from Enegen which provides fast and scalable access to the Balancing Mechanism.
Dynamic Demand 2.0 Trader is our automated storage optimisation proposition with Erova Energy; leveraging state of the art automation and control software with sharp market intell to exploit arbitrage opportunities in traded markets. We increasingly see the Balancing Mechanism becoming the dominant revenue stream for battery assets as they move from niche grid applications to coarse energy balancing."
The increasing functionality and resilience of Erova Energy’s trading platform has enabled it to tighten its focus on helping its customers maximise the returns they derive from the power they generate.
Nick Williams, Director at Erova Energy added:
Enegen’s Genstar4 is a highly mature wholesale energy trading software suite which is clearly moving with the times offering a combination of VLP registration support, readiness for TERRE and a fully hosted service for added resilience and trading assurance.
The fact that Genstar4 currently dispatches a significant proportion of the UK’s electricity generation portfolio and supports thermal, hydro, battery, pumped storage and wind generation assets for both large portfolio and independent producers including SSE, Drax and Intergen, speaks for itself.
Enegen took all the risk out of automating this trading, settlement, management and reporting activity and added a huge amount of value very quickly and cost effectively.
Following Erova’s own VLP qualification, it has elected to use Genstar4’s VLP Module to support mandatory exchange of Delivered Volume Information with the Supplier Volume Allocation Agent (SVAA).
Genstar4 VLP Module specifically enables calculation and submission of P0282 Delivered Volume data and processes the various acceptance and rejection files from the SVAA. The Module also alerts the user to any missing data and extrapolates missing data prior to submission deadlines if required.
David Holt, CEO, Enegen explained:
Our focus on customer service extended beyond rapid response to configuration and functionality queries, to supporting Erova and its technology partners in whatever ways we can. This includes assisting them to identify other niche software providers, to passing on the benefit of our experience helping other generators and energy trading companies stay ahead of new market rules and requirements. This partnership approach is helping us build our customer base for Genstar4 rapidly now."
Telephone: +44 (0)23 9431 7620
Email: info@enegen.co.uk