Retail Market Assurance Services for the Irish Electricity Market Niemesh Amin & Peter Varley IGG 20th August 2009

Extranet Broker Mechanism Background Extranet provided to enable suppliers to view MP data and improve accuracy of registrations Data then has to be transferred into the Supplier’s customer service systems To date, this has been a manual transfer

Extranet Broker Mechanism Background Broker mechanism issues a query to the extranet, “scrapes” the response screen and automatically transfers data into an application As far as the extranet is concerned it is dealing with a person

Extranet Broker Mechanism Background SAP-ISU services ALL requests including Market Messages, MRSO & Networks functions and Extranet Extranet is designed and sized to cater for human use Use of brokering leads to more queries, which in turn increases the frequency of heavy loading of the SAP-ISU system and increases in response times

Extranet Broker Mechanism Proposed Guidelines Suppliers Queries must be initiated manually Each query should be for a single MPRN, not “sets” All broker queries to use the same connection There must be a caching mechanism to avoid repeat queries of the same MPAN. The cache should be designed to cater for a defined number of hours of queries Users should be trained in acceptable use

Extranet Broker Mechanism Proposed Guidelines Suppliers Supplier must nominate, and provide contact details for, its broker SPOC(s) Supplier must declare broker “username(s)” and use only this for brokering Processes should cater for “no response” HTML structure of response may change without notice – must cater for this Brokering is not a Market Design element and may not be used to influence introduction of changes or their timing

Extranet Broker Mechanism Proposed Guidelines Networks Available channels will be divided into a “manual” and a “broker” set All broker queries will use a broker channel Manual queries may use any channel Suppliers will be given advance notice of any planned changes to HTML structure of nominated pages There is no guarantee that unplanned changes will not occur

Extranet Broker Mechanism Proposed Guidelines Networks Broker usage will be monitored If response becomes unacceptable, Networks will adjust Extranet parameters to favour manual users until overload situation is resolved. May involve disabling broker ids temporarily Deviation from “fair use” policy will be reported to Supplier. If abuse continues RMDS & CER will be notified and userid may be discontinued

Extranet Broker Mechanism Proposed Guidelines Governance There should be an “Extranet” agreement to which Networks and each Supplier is a party There should be a “fair usage” policy Broker “system”, and material changes to it, must be independently assured

Questions & Discussion