GASUNIE

Gasunie serves the public interest, offers integrated transport and infrastructure services to their customers and adheres to the highest safety and business standards. Gasunie believes in a sustainable future with a balanced energy mix and a lasting role for diversified gas. Gasunie believes that they serve their customers best with innovative gas infrastructure solutions.

ABOUT GASUNIE

Gasunie is a leading European gas infrastructure company providing the transport of natural gas and green gas in the Netherlands and the Northern part of Germany.
To get the gas to the end-user safely and reliably, Gasunie uses a high-grade gas transmission grid.
Customers of Gasunie use this grid to transport gas on to end-users and some end-users are directly connected to the grid.
Gasunie has two subsidiaries that manage the gas transmission grid: Gasunie Deutschland in Germany and Gasunie Transport Services (GTS) in the Netherlands.
Gasunie also provides gas storage facilities (EnergyStock), the pipeline to England (BBL) and the LNG terminal Gate at Maasvlakte. In addition, Gasunie facilitates and stimulates the green gas market through the subsidiary Vertogas. Producers and traders in green gas can use Vertogas for certification of their green gas.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF GASUNIE IN FACTS:

Volume ~125 bcm gas p/y, Length transport grid ~15.500 km, 22 Compressor stations, 19 Blending stations, 93 pressure regulating stations, 14 Export stations, 1.300 Gas delivery stations, 2 LNG- storage (incl. peak shaver), 2 nitrogen facilities, 1 Underground gas storage, 1 Underground nitrogen storage.

WHAT IT CHALLENGES AND REQUIREMENTS HAD TO BE MANAGED?

  • New European regulation required that Gasunie offers a great part of its capacity through a European trading platform. The existing system (SAP IS-U) made it difficult and expensive to accommodate these changes
  • Deploy a system which offers business agility and better time to market
  • High availability 24/7
  • Simplification and standardization
  • Integration with Microsoft platform technologies

WHAT WERE THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE SOLUTION?

The preferred solution had to be configurable and easily upgradable because this also influences the total cost of ownership and the future-proof character of the solution. Also, the user interface had to be intuitive and user-friendly. Furthermore, the solution had to be able to cope with the evolutions and regulations in the market.

WHY WAS MECOMS SELECTED?

The new European regulation on Gas transport and the excessive maintenance costs of their existing environment, made Gasunie decide to look for another business support platform.

After a thorough pre-study end of 2012 driven by Gasunie and Accenture, Gasunie decided to replace SAP IS-U with MECOMS for Contract Management and Billing.
Three important capabilities put MECOMS in front:

  1. MECOMS is interfacing with PRISMA, the European Capacity Platform for Shippers, enabling MECOMS to perform a major role in the new capacity auctioning process;
  2. MECOMS is much easier to adapt to the new regulation, and
  3. the capability of MECOMS to deal with the most complex contracts in the utility industry.

Also the fact that MECOMS is Microsoft’s preferred solution for energy and utilities anywhere in the world and the recognition by industry analysts like Gartner, backed-up the choice for MECOMS.

HOW DID GASUNIE EXPERIENCE THE MECOMS PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION?

This project was done under the supervision of Gasunie together with Accenture/Avanade-Ferranti. “We experienced the ‘Accenture/Avanade-Ferranti’-collaboration as very committed to deliver a high-quality implementation that has met our expectations. There was a tight deadline for delivering the complete system. Existing functionality and the new auction functionality had to be rebuild/re-configured in the new MECOMS system. Furthermore, the communication with all back-end systems had to be delivered. This required great planning and technical skills, both were met in this project. The system went live on the planned date.

HOW IS MECOMS PERFORMING AT GASUNIE?

MECOMS ensures a high availability and throughput of capacity bookings including the calculation of booked, auction and remaining capacity for 2.000 network points (points on which capacity of gas needs to be reserved) on a daily level. In the near future even on hourly basis. MECOMS proves the stability of its architecture, as it is running smoothly at Gasunie.

WHAT IS THE MAIN BENEFIT OF MECOMS FOR GASUNIE?

“MECOMS supports us in one of our most critical core processes as Gas Transport Service Operator (TSO).
One of the main reasons for selecting MECOMS is the lower cost-of-ownership we expect for the long run because we have maximized the use of the standard out-of-the-box functionalities when implementing MECOMS.
This represents significant savings for us compared to the initial high maintenance costs because every change represented a custom development.
The main benefit of MECOMS for Gasunie is the lower cost-of-ownership.”

MECOMS IS IMPLEMENTED AT GASUNIE BY MECOMS PARTNER ACCENTURE.

Accenture and Avanade act as worldwide MECOMS Partners. Their global delivery capabilities allow them to jointly deliver effective and innovative projects to help utilities lower their cost to
serve and improve customer satisfaction.

Role: Transmission System Operator
Process Scope:  Source – Sell – Manage Assets – Measure & Deliver – Report & Control – Bill & Collect
Region: EMEA