TCS Partners with AEMO to Transform the Energy Market in Australia

Tata Consultancy Services’ New Cloud-based Platform Powers the Five-Minute Settlement Program, Enabling Access to Affordable, Secure, and Reliable Energy for Australians

PRESS RELEASE

SYDNEY | MUMBAI, July 26, 2022: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), has helped Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), design and implement a futuristic solution that powers the Five-Minute Settlement (5MS) Program, creating a more efficient energy market in the country with better outcomes for energy producers, distributors and consumers.

AEMO is an independent organisation that manages all electricity and gas systems and markets across Australia; responsible for the settlement of the National Electricity Market which connects the grids of eastern and southern Australian states to create a wholesale energy market. Previously, AEMO has only been able to settle the market in 30-minute blocks, limited by its ability to segment the data. This created an inefficient pricing outcome and was identified as a contributing factor to disorderly bidding.

To address these inequities, the 5MS rule change was introduced, shifting the current 30-minute wholesale electricity spot market settlement period to five-minutes, thereby providing a better price signal for investment in faster response technologies, such as batteries and gas peaking generators. It will also enable more efficient bidding, operational decisions, and investments, aligned to dispatch and financial settlement periods.

TCS worked closely with AEMO to design and deliver a cloud-based platform-, leveraging DevOps, automated testing, and agile practices. The intelligent platform provides data ingestion, calculation, and reporting capabilities. It auto-scales to manage increasing data volumes, with 20.5 million daily meter reads expected by 2025 and 2 trillion data points by 2028, with minimal intervention. In addition, the solution provides APIs to connect all market participant systems to assure the integrity of market settlement while enabling future opportunities for AEMO to further introduce automation through artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The move to 5MS was one of the smoothest transitions onto a new operating regime that Australian market participants have experienced. The platform has been operating without any disruptions to the energy market, setting the implementation benchmark for future market changes.

Over 10 million customers across Queensland, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia have already benefitted from this initiative. This program also lays the foundation for upcoming energy market reforms and accelerates the ESG and Net Zero initiatives in Australia.

“The successful implementation of 5MS, WDR and customer switching has created better outcomes for market participants, consumers and a more efficient energy sector in Australia. As one of the most significant reforms since the NEM’s inception in 1998, 5MS provides better price signal for investment in fast (electricity generation and demand side) response and flexible technologies,” said Daniel Westerman, CEO, AEMO.

“We are honoured to build on our long-standing relationship with AEMO to work together on this first-of-its-kind market-transforming program. TCS’ domain knowledge, technology expertise, and investments in research and innovation, make us the preferred partner for such industry transformations. In addition to enabling access to affordable, secure, and reliable energy, the 5MS program lays the foundation for further innovation in Australia’s energy market, while providing a roadmap to other energy markets across the world,” said Girish Ramachandran, President, TCS Asia Pacific.

The IDC report, Life in the Fast Lane: Bringing a Five-Minute Settlement to the Australia Utilities Market analyses the impacts of the 5MS on the utilities and industry participants, calling the program a first-of-its-kind, setting the roadmap for the global energy market. Read the full report here

About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that has been partnering with many of the world’s largest businesses in their transformation journeys for over 50 years. TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of business, technology and engineering services and solutions. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile™ delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development.

A part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business group, TCS has over 606,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 55 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $25.7 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2022, and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. TCS' proactive stance on climate change and award-winning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading sustainability indices such as the MSCI Global Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Emerging Index. For more information, visit www.tcs.com