Published by isobel.regan@dontpanicprojects.com
Published Date 16.04.2024 
In May 2022, BritNed and Supercharge began designing and building Empire, a next-generation trading and nomination platform, which has revolutionised trading in the energy sector since its launch in September 2023.
The fully integrated platform has replaced three legacy, isolated systems, providing an integrated approach to trading on the BritNed interconnector, which connects the electrical grids of Great Britain and the Netherlands.
With Empire, users can manage their entire BritNed trading portfolio from one platform, and its modern, modular build enables BritNed to be responsive to market developments and evolving customer needs.
THE CHALLENGE & VISION
Before Empire, BritNed’s customers needed to use different systems to manage their portfolio, including participating in auctions, nominating awarded capacity, and managing financial settlements.
After an internal analysis identified the existing systems delivered a poor user experience and restricted the ability to respond to customer needs in a landscape that is rapidly changing, BritNed sought a partner that could bring innovative ideas and facilitate a different angle of approach.
The project started with a shared vision: to create a modern platform to maximise BritNed’s capabilities to its fullest potential, allowing users to seamlessly trade and nominate capacity more efficiently than ever. The goal was to create more business value with automation, decrease operator complexity in case of market events like unplanned outages, and make all executions as easy as possible for customers. Do to this, the functionality of the existing systems needed to be integrated into one system in a re-imagining of the user’s experience.
A PARTNERSHIP TO DELIVER INNOVATION
BritNed is a joint venture between National Grid and TenneT, the transmission system operators of Great Britain and the Netherlands. Becoming operational in 2011, BritNed has established itself as one of the early and industry-leading interconnectors in the North Sea, maintaining an innovative and pioneering approach to operations. BritNed operates the 1000MW interconnector between Great Britain and the Netherlands, connecting the electrical grids of the countries via a 260km submarine cable, and powers over 1.4 million homes per year.
To deliver Empire, BritNed embarked on a partnership with Supercharge, specialists in creating software that combines cutting-edge technology with a human-centred design. The decision to select Supercharge as the digital product development partner was based on the vendor’s expertise in creating energy software, resulting in tools that maximise efficiency in the field of critical infrastructure.
REDESIGNING AN INTERCONNECTOR PLATFORM
The existing fractured workflows provided a cumbersome experience and drained valuable time for traders operating in a highly pressurised environment. Therefore, Empire would drive change with a strong focus on the user experience (UX), as well as delivering an unprecedented level of performance and productivity with the introduction of new technologies.
To determine the aesthetic of Empire, BritNed and Supercharge held art direction workshops and created wireframe concepts based on the ideal UX. These were then translated into an Atomic Design System. This also led to the creation of Empire’s Dark Mode, which is the first in an energy platform of its kind and has proved critical for reducing eye strain for traders.
UX experts crafted the exceptionally efficient work environment after carefully understanding the ideal workflows of its users. Intuitive dashboards provide a comprehensive overview of all relevant data users require, enabling faster and more accurate decision-making, and ultimately leading to improved business outcomes.
Empire features advanced API interfaces and a UX focused on productivity. It is also the first interconnector platform that allows all functionality to be used through the API, providing customers with the choice of accessing Empire and all functionality through the graphic user interface (GUI) or the advanced API technology. In addition to providing greater convenience, the advanced APIs also reduce operational IT costs for customers.
LAUNCHING EMPIRE
Empire has replaced multi-platform workflows with efficient integrated journeys, significantly reducing the workload of traders, and has received highly positive feedback from BritNed’s customers since its launch in September 2023.
Empire has been seamlessly integrated with BritNed’s Control Point System and 15+ third parties in the European Energy Industry, enabling highly automated operations and an improved experience for users.
In the initial 6 months of operation, Empire has allocated 14753GW of Day Ahead and Intraday capacity, and 19398GW of Long Term capacity. The total Flow instructed by Empire was 2398GWh, which is equivalent to powering approximately 1.4M households every single hour.
ENABLING FUTURE INNOVATIONS
As a modern, scalable platform, Empire’s modular build enables BritNed to be responsive to market developments and evolving customer needs, releasing updates and new features at pace. An exciting roadmap is already in place for 2024, with customer feedback helping to inform development priorities, including a first-of-its-kind auction, the Buy Now Auction.
Using a Dutch auction mechanism, Buy Now Auctions run differently to all other interconnector auctions, providing participants with unique advantages including greater flexibility and convenience by enabling trading closer to the delivery period. Without Empire, delivering this innovation to the market would simply not be possible, and therefore, Buy Now is only available from BritNed.
Launched in April 2024, in the first 7 days of operation, Buy Now allocated 1984MW of Intraday capacity. Capacity was primarily sold in 5MW offers, with the lowest offer secured at €0.08 MW. Capacity was secured closer to the delivery period than possible with regular Intraday auctions on most occasions, including capacity being secured just 9 minutes before the closure of the Nomination gate.
COMMENTS
Nils Teipel, Commercial Operations & Planning Manager at BritNed said: “We are delighted to see Empire nominated at the Global Business Tech Awards 2024. Empire has transformed how we manage our auctions and we are incredibly proud of the feedback we have received from customers. We are also energised by the possibilities Empire enables as we continue to innovate and elevate the experience for our customers.
“Working with Supercharge to develop Empire was an exceptional experience. We swiftly established common goals building a platform which stands out from what was previously available in the market, fostering a collaborative environment focused on innovation and quality. The BritNed team utilised its 12 years of operational experience and knowledge of market platforms to help inform customer experience, workflow and design decisions. Supercharge’s rapid knowledge acquisition and user-centric approach ensured the seamless delivery of the Empire platform not only on time, but also at a great quality level, which in the end led to a very smooth go live despite the huge complexity of such a transition. Empire has also enabled BritNed to step up our business to a new level and has already help us to deliver new, innovative products such as the Buy Now auction.”
Daniel Homoki-Farkas, Managing Director at Supercharge commented: “It was an absolute pleasure to work in such close collaboration with BritNed in building Empire. The partnership has really benefited both BritNed and Supercharge: BritNed’s industry insights provided us with a deep understanding of Interconnectors, while Supercharge brought its design and technical excellence to the table.
“I’m immensely proud of what we’ve accomplished together, seeing the incredible capabilities of the Empire platform. Being shortlisted for the Global Business Tech Awards is another great testament to what long-term, meaningful partnerships like ours can achieve when we work together.”
For more information on BritNed, please visit https://www.britned.com/
For more information on Supercharge, please visit https://supercharge.io/
Follow BritNed on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/britned
Follow Supercharge on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/teamsupercharge/
