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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Questions & Discussion