In market participants the liberalization of the electricity markets in Europe created the need for a structured and as comprehensive as possible market analysis. The new type of energy trade required a good understanding of the market forces, permanently up-to-date information on market prices and means of comparison with other markets. For this purpose, a central data warehouse for energy trade was developed with SMART (Systematic Market Analysis & Research Tool).

Market data is structured in the form of time series and comprises prices for energy (electricity) and energy carriers (coal, oil, natural gas, and so on), prices of commodities (aluminum, copper, and so on), weather information (temperature, wind and so on), water levels of lakes and rivers, usage curves, stock market prices (EEX, APX, IPE, NYMEX, UKPX, Nordpool, and so on), broker notations (GFI, TFS, Prebon, Spectron, and so on), financial data (interest rates, exchange rates) and other data from various sources.

An essential enhancement of the SMART system is WebSM@RT which ensures a simple and fast distribution of market-relevant information. WebSM@RT is the web-interface of the market information system, which provides the very extensive data to all of authorized intranet users. The main features of the system are the large number of available data (at this point in time about 28,000 time-series, on average 2.9 attributes per time series, all in all about 29 million data sets) and the opportunity to easily and target-orientedly find the desired information and process it further.

Task

Comprehensive market data have to be provided to users in all business units and at various locations.

• User must have the opportunity to quickly and easily find the desired data in the multitude of time series.

• To turn data into information time series are to be displayed in the form of a graph and users must be given the opportunity to conduct any further operations on the data using standard tools like Microsoft Excel.

• Certain information may only be available to specific user groups (for licensing and other reasons).

Objectives

• Simple and fast distribution of all market relevant information to the authorized users.

• Gaining advantages in competition due to comprehensive knowledge of the current market situation, because better trading forecasts can be created based on historic information.

Key Data

• Project Duration: 3 month

• Number of Employees: 3

• Number of Users: >200

Characteristics

• Application based on JSP (Java Server Pages), can be called up at any workstation without additional installation of software.

• Time series are identified using the six dimensions instrument, commodity, region, product type, information source, delivery period (modified star pattern). The dynamic curve selection logic ensures that only valid combinations of dimensions can be selected. Alternatively curves can be searched for by name.

• The selection opportunities for curves can be limited by assigning authorizations concerning series, groups of series, groups of users, and users.

• The data itself can be stored in several fact tables of any design. Only the key fields are important; data fields can be defined differently for each series regarding number, name, data type, unit or currency.

• The results of a query can be limited to a period that can be defined freely (date restriction).

• Dynamic design of dialogs, depending on the selected series and its characteristics.

• Data can be displayed in the form is time series or forward curve. Forward curves can be selected depending on or independent from time of trading.

• All calendar dates can be given as an absolute date or relative to the current day.

• Scientific units and monetary data (e.g. prices) can be converted into other units and currencies.

• For preview results are displayed directly in the browser in the form of a graph and are also provided in an EXCEL sheet for download.

• Up to 245 curves (limited by the maximum number of columns in Excel) can be selected simultaneously and displayed in parallel. The selection of curves can be changed at any time.

• Complete queries including all parameters can be stored, called again and forwarded to other users.

• For each curve various information is available, e.g. source of the curve (including URL) or a descriptive text. Furthermore, each user can write comments on curves for specific days, e.g. to pass on his knowledge of specific events on this day.

• Users choose their own passwords and can change them at any time. For daily access to Web SM@RT passwords can be stored locally in the form of cookies.

• The module News Archive offers a simplified access to documents of different types (.DOC, .PDF, .XLS, and so on) published at any interval. In this authorizations are considered.

• The module Power Exchanges offers a simplified access to specific 24 hour spot curves of the electricity stock market in the form of a forward curve of with immediate preview. Download in the form of an Excel sheet is also possible.

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