RiskVision is Advantage Energy Solutions’ trading and risk management system, designed specifically to suit the needs of power and gas traders, supply businesses and electricity generators.

The system is modular in design, enabling it to be configured to meet the exact requirements of any business involved in either gas or power trading, or both.  With functionality to support trading of daily or long-term gas, intra-day, weekly, monthly, seasonal or quarterly power, the system supports both the Julian and EFA calendars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Developed in C++ on a two-tier architecture and available on either a SQLServer or Oracle database platform, the system offer reliable, robust, intuitive performance at a fraction of the cost of other trading and risk management systems.

Market participation support

Advantage Energy Solutions has extensive experience of developing solutions to meet the needs of participants in global de-regulating electricity markets.  The Company has been involved in a variety of consultancy and system development projects in markets such as South Africa, Ireland, Spain, Sri Lanka etc, which has enabled us to develop a detailed understanding of the functionality and facilities required to participate in new market structures.

For the UK electricity market, Advantage Energy Solutions has developed the a suite of NETA market participation support modules.  These, configurable solutions provide all the facilities a NETA participant requires to operate effectively in the market and communicate with the System Operator, the Market Operator and their counter-parties.

Advantage Energy Solutions has also developed a Spanish Market Interface that facilitates the generation and communication of market bids and the capture of dispatch schedules from the Market operator (OMEL) and the interaction with the System Operator (REE) for the capture of intra-day ancillary service instructions and the receipt of settlements information.

 

 

Gas & power trading systems

Emissions management system

In early 2003 the European Commission published its proposal for a new Directive setting out the basis for the importation of carbon credits earned under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) scheme into the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS).  The EU_ETS came into effect on 1^st January 2005 and has a profound effect on the manner in which plant now operate.

All industries in the traded sector of the EU-ETS have now received their allocation, and this has been distributed across the installations within each sector.  It will be crucially important to any installation within the scheme to understand the relationship between its production schedule (whether that be cement, glass, power or other commodity), the emissions made and the consumption of carbon credits as the calendar year progresses.  Advantage has developed the Emissions Management System to enable participants in the EU-ETS to manage their allocation and plan ahead with confidence. 

Demand forecasting

In a competitive de-regulated electricity market accurate demand forecasting can lead to significant savings by both Supply businesses and large customers.  Supply businesses need to be able to forecast their aggregate demand in order to contract efficiently for bulk energy and to trade effectively in the market.  In addition, they need to forecast the demands of individual customers, or groups of customers, in order to offer prices that reflect the customer’s consumption patterns.

Large customers have a need to forecast the demand at their sites in order to obtain the best prices available from Suppliers or, alternatively, act as a power procurer in their own right and contract for their energy requirements directly.

Load forecasting for large customers needs to be undertaken by settlement period (typically hourly or half-hourly) to take account of factors which influence the demand at any time on a particular day.  It is also necessary to forecast monthly energy requirements and system peak demands which impact upon transmission and distribution use of system charges.

Advantage Energy Solutions has developed the Secter demand forecasting product as a flexible application to meet the varying requirements of large customers and supply businesses.

Price forecasting

Companies operating in competitive markets need a forward view of power prices in the short, medium, and long term to assist them in their trading decisions and strategic acquisition strategies.

Prices in a market are determined by many factors, such as the extent of competition in the market, the behaviour of the market players, the capacity of new plant being commissioned, the capacity of existing plant that is to be closed, growth in system demand, the expected operating cost of power plants, plant operating regimes and load factors, the cost of new entry to the market, financing assumptions for power plant and environmental constraints.

Advantage Energy Solutions has developed and continues to maintain a number of software systems which can be used for producing wholesale price forecasts for competitive markets.  The two key systems used to undertake these analyses are Prescient and Power.

Power systems modelling

Advantage Energy Solutions’ Power Plant Optimiser has been specifically designed to optimise the running of a generating station to maximise profit, in an environment where the plant is subject to “must-take”, or “take or pay” fuel contract obligations or environmental limits.  Within this context, the model optimises the purchase of fuels on the spot market.   The model takes as inputs:

· a forecast of wholesale power prices;

· a forecast of spot gas prices;

· details of the fuel contracts;

· the physical characteristics of the station; and

· SO₂ emission limits

 

The model determines the optimal duty cycle for the plant to maximise profit given the available fuel supply options.  The optimisation process involves the ability to choose to purchase spot gas where this is cheaper than contract gas, and to deal with “must take” and “take or pay” fuel constraints over any time period.  The program simulates the impact of planned and forced outages, ramp rates, minimum on/off times, and temperature effects on plant efficiency.

The main output of the model is an optimal duty cycle for each half-hour of the year, showing the generation (GWh), fuel consumption (TJ), fuel costs, start-up costs, SO₂ emissions, electricity market revenues and profit. The model produces summary results that can be broken down to provide detail by fuel contract.

Quality Software, Services and Industry Consultancy

ADVANTAGE ENERGY SOLUTIONS LTD