Customer Story: SPE

SPE chooses MECOMS™ for Grid Fee Settlement Process

SPE is the second largest player in the Belgian energy market. Their turnover is approximately 2 billion euros, and the company is one of the top 30 largest Belgian companies. SPE produces electricity at 19 power plants in Flanders and Wallonia.

SPE-Luminus has more than 1.5 million customer accounts, both householders and companies and approximately 1000 employees. SPE supplies householders and companies with gas and electricity under the brand name Luminus.

Grid Fees

The Grid Fee is a fee which in the Belgian liberalized energy market model is billed by the DGO (Distribution Grid Operator) to the Supplier(s) for the usage of the distribution grid. It is based on consumption data.

The process of reconciling these invoices with the validated consumption data is often not supported by the Backoffice systems in place. Suboptimal systems and workarounds take a lot of time and often lead to errors and related rectification processes. This is why SPE has chosen for MECOMS™ to support this process.

MECOMS™ Solution

The MECOMS™ "Read-Process" stores all invoice-, consumption- and master data (including tariffs) using its market-compliant messaging system.

The "Treat-Process" then starts validating and checking on correctness and completeness of these data and will start the reconciliation. Also, for B2B customers where more complex algorithms apply, MECOMS™ validates the full cycle before passing this information to the billing system. This validation takes place before billing of the customer takes place.

In the end, the reconciliation and settlement process is performed in a much shorter cycle with fewer errors. MECOMS™ built-in flexibility allows SPE to respond faster to changing market conditions.