Web Offer System
(WOS)
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A
new web based offer system (WOS)
has been
launched by HARD software for the Australian National Electricity
Market (NEM). Using the WOS
a generator, retailer or Market
Network Service Provider (MNSP) can offer plant prices and
availabilities into the NEM and create a complete and verifiable
database record of offers, acknowledgments and rejections including
audit trails that record all significant user actions.
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The
key benefits of using WOS for
bidding
in the Australian NEM are:
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Able
to bid multiple participants in a single seamless bidding process using
only a standard Internet browser and access to the WOS server.
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Able
to be configured with multiple application servers with replicated
databases to provide a high reliability and availability system.
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Complete
database and audit trail record of offer process.
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Display
the current NEM market prices, demands and generations in a dynamic web
based graphical display.
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Security
can be configured with user roles mapped to specific units, offer types
or functions such as editing or submitting prices and/or availabilities.
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Display
current NEM offers and synchronize the selected offer if a market
information database is accessible.
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Submit
energy, all forms of ancillary services and MTPASA offers.
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All
offers can be authenticated at the time of submission using NT
usernames and groups.
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System
user interface and validation business rules are configurable to your
requirements.
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All
aspects of the user interface can be customized to your company's
individual requirements.
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System
can use any SQL database and can run on Windows or UNIX platforms using
either Apache or IIS web servers.
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New
laptop optimized version can run backup and disaster recovery bidding
systems that are identical in functionality to the server bidding
system.
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Automated
database to laptop replication and offer ID synchronization features
are also provided.
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COM
objects can integrated into system on Windows platforms to provide
intelligent optimization systems.
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External
optimization systems can easily be integrated into system.
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The
initial login page
provides the login for the WOS
application and provides application's user authentication function.
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The
home
page is the main working page
for
the WOS
application. A summary of the individual user's rights
and privileges is displayed with a graphical representation of the
available units and services. All of the other pages in the WOS
system can be accessed from the home
page.
The
current offer to be displayed is selected from
the drop down list of available dates (or if unavailable, a previous
offer or offer template can be copied to any range of dates). The
required unit and service can be either be directly selected by
double clicking on the appropriate box or selected and the "Edit
offer" button clicked.
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The
offer
page is the main editing page of
the WOS
application and can be used to change prices,
availabilities and parameters. The system determines the available
prices and availabilities based on the system time and incorporates a
sophisticated set of business validation rules that can be modified
to your companies individual requirements.
A
number of short cuts have been incorporated into
the offer page
to quickly navigate between offers, submit
single unit bids or trip units.
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The
submit
page allows the user to submit a
range of units and services in a single offer process, including
bidding for more than one NEM participant. A background process
correctly determines the appropriate locations for the offer files
for each participant and retrieves the acknowledgments from the
designated NEM locations for storage in the database.
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The
offer
status page provides an up to
date summary of the bids that have been made from the WOS
system including the units and services offered, a link to the actual
NEM offer text file and acknowledgment file and the details of the
offer submission process.
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The
submit
status page provides a quick
summary for each NEM offer type of the current status of the bids, so
that presence of default bids and last accepted bids for ancillary
services can be quickly determined.
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The
copy
page allows the user to copy all
or some offers to new dates or merge with existing offers so that
bidding operations are quickly replicated. Any offer in the system
can be saved as a standard template to be used as the starting point
for any bid creation and parts of offers can be merged with existing
offers.
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The
admin
page allows the users, roles,
units and participants data to be maintained in the system. The admin
page shown is the role
administration page where user roles can
be assigned to different bidding functions, units and offer service
types as required.
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The
NEM
market page shows the current
state
of the NEM market using a dynamic web page. Shown on the graph is the
current energy or ancillary service prices and demands for each
region, constraint status, in addition to the alarm color encoded
region maps. Additional historical information can be displayed by
moving the mouse pointer over a price
or constraint to see the change
in data, and current import and export limits.
Generators
also have the option of displaying
current generation and ancillary service enablement, and price and
generation forecasts to as many past and future trading periods as
required.
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The
system is a true web client server application
with no client side requirements other than the use of a standard
copy of MS Internet Explorer (5+).
The
system is designed to provide a high
reliability, high availability system than can incorporate multiple
application servers and replicated databases than can operate
successfully as a connected system or can operate individually and
then synchronize when connections have been restored.
Encrypted
operation can also be supported using
SSL (with or without client certificates) so that the web offer
system could potentially be used over the Internet and provide a
widely available tool with the confidence that security can not be
compromised. Also a VPN could be used to provide the security for the
application over the open Internet.
The
system has been successfully implemented using
Microsoft IIS 5 and Apache 1.3.24 web servers and can use any SQL
database system including Oracle 7.3, 8, SQL Server 6.5, 7, 2000 and
MySQL 3.23.
The
procedure for implementing the system is
typically to install a test system as soon as possible using the
NEMMCO pre-production server so that development, evaluation and user
acceptance testing can be carried out in a safe environment. Also any
training required can use this system.
Is
also worthwhile keeping the test system system
once the production system has been implemented so that enhancements
and updates can be tested before production implementation. The test
system can reside on the same server as the production system if
resources are tight with a different database instance.
All
source code is supplied with the system and
the license for the system would include requirements to keep the
source code confidential and that unauthorized changes to the core
application code (rather than your customized code base that includes
business rules, look and feel and any custom pages) are not able to
be supported.
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As
the WOS
application is a web server
based application, it is possible to use a wide range of security
measures to secure the use of the WOS
application. The
application uses user/password authentication for access to the
application with users assigned
to roles, and these roles are then
assigned privileges within the system. No plain text passwords are
stored in the system.
In
addition to this security, possible Internet
server technologies that could be used for hardening the application
are:
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Applying
all current web server and client security patches.
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Use
of client certificates on assigned clients.
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Use
of SSL to provide encrypted network traffic.
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IP
filtering and IPSec to specify access to the system.
It
should be noted that some of the security
measures listed may have a performance impact on the system.
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A
full working implementation of the WOS
with simulated NEMMCO offer processing is available on the www.hardsoftware.com
website for evaluation and training at:
http://www.hardsoftware.com/wos/login.php
Simply
login with any of the following user names
and passwords (different user names and passwords have different
rights and privileges):
admin/password
operator/password
trader/password
All
changes, offers, acknowledgments created in
the test system are cleared every day and so none are retained in the
database for more than 24 hours.
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Trading
Online Data (TOD) system
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Product overview
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The
HARD software Trading Online Data system (TOD)
provides a source of data and an infrastructure upon which tasks that
require energy market information, such as marking contract positions
to market and trader summary screens, have a central and controlled
source of data. The system consists of a database schema and an
service that downloads contract swap, option and cap quotes from
Reuters systems (eg. TFS, SFE, PREBON & NGES), IGES forward
curve, actual trades and AFMA revaluation spreadsheets, interprets
the information and stores the results in a RDBMS database structure.
Through this organisation of the information, it is possible to write
applications to query the database and retrieve all market data that
is relevant for any particular time period.
By
using the TOD
database it is possible to
develop a process that determines the Mark To Market (MTM) values
designated contract types and periods using a consistent and agreed
set of business rules that can form the basis of organisational
reporting of market positions. An interface table can then be
provided to other systems, such as the present trading analysis
database, so that these MTM values can be used in their calculations
to provide consistent results. The TOD
system can be used
directly with third party products such as MS Access or Crystal
Reports to provide market based reports or front ends can be
developed in MS Excel or other computer languages to provide
summarised or "best price" broker data.
The
system has been extended to add weather
forecasts and price, generation and demand forecasts, all tied to a
single data structure with the same time periods and time stamps as
the quotes. Through this organization of the information it is
possible to write applications to query the database and retrieve all
market data that is relevant for any particular time period.
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TOD
trading screen example
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An
example of a client's
market information screen developed in Excel using the TOD system
database.
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