Axpo Solutions AG - Shorter reaction time for electricity trading

Initial situation
Axpo Trading AG trades in energy and is active on power exchanges such as Trayport. Traders place their offers on their platform. An offer contains details of the quantity of electricity, the price and the delivery period. These details must be presented to the trader as quickly and clearly as possible when a transaction is made, and are automatically supplemented by further data and imported into Axpo Trading AG's own position management system.


Challenge
Reading out the data on the exchange, adding to it and storing it in one's own system must function reliably and with as little delay as possible. At the end of a trading day, the ratio of purchases and deliveries must be balanced. Balanced trading is monitored by Swissgrid, the Swiss transmission system operator. Each electricity supplier must report to Swissgrid at a set time every day whether its ratio of purchases and sales is balanced. At the end of a trading day, trades are often made at short notice to ensure that this balance is achieved. This is where fast transmission of the schedule data plays a role, since a late entry could result in a fine.


Solution
The new requirements were defined in close cooperation with the customer and the existing system was simplified. The outdated previous system had been programmed by iRIX. Now a trading system is in use that has a high degree of automation and offers fast performance. This new version was slimmed down in terms of functionality, i.e. functions that were no longer up-to-date were eliminated, but the technology was upgraded. Many obsolete functions reduced the clarity of the user interface. Now all deals are listed with the most important information in a clearly structured way and the current status can be called up at any time. Changes to data and the status of a deal, which is implemented with Rico Framework and JavaFX, are immediately visible to all traders.

Added value for the client
Replacing the old system eliminates the associated licence fees. The deals are now displayed more clearly, additions can be made at the touch of a button and data is transferred much more quickly than before thanks to better performance and a high level of automation. This offers more flexibility in trading, no deals are lost and reporting to Swissgrid can take place on time.