Supplying electricity across international borders: Siemens implements electronic auction solution for CAO

Siemens IT Solutions and Services has been commissioned by CAO Central Allocation Office GmbH (CAO), a subsidiary of eight electricity transmission system operators from Central Eastern Europe (CEE*), to develop and operate an electronic auction platform. The Siemens unit will handle this project in close cooperation with its partner Riecado. It will be the first project in Europe to enable network operators to use a power flow-based system for increasing the efficient network utilization. The system is scheduled to go live in 2009. The order has a TCV of more than €4 million and is set to run for five years.

CAO Central Allocation Office GmbH will coordinate congestion management of the cross-border electricity capacities on the borders between the countries Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. It is planned to handle the technical calculation and entire demand for transmission capacities via an electronic system, and to this end Siemens is preparing a power flow-based auction platform enabling the realization of the yearly, monthly and daily allocations. The new system covers all the transmission interconnections between countries involved as a single region whereas, in the past, capacity auctioning had to be carried out with border by border transactions in several bilateral or multilateral allocation processes.

Siemens is prime contractor for the project, which offers CAO an IT solution from a single source and with one contact person for all the topics involved, from software and system development to implementation, right through to operation of the entire application. The software for the new system is supplied by Austrian company Riecado GmbH, and the solution is being implemented and integrated jointly by the two partners.

* The European Union has defined seven cluster regions for the transmission system operators. One of them is the region Central Eastern Europe (CEE).

Additional information on CAO:
CAO Central Allocation Office GmbH is headquartered in Freising near Munich, Germany, and was founded in July 2008 by the following eight Transmission System Operators: ČEPS a.s. (Czech Republic), Electro-Slovenija d.o.o.(Slovenia), E.ON Netz GmbH (Germany), MAVIR Hungarian TSO Company Ltd. (Hungary), PSE-Operator S.A. (Poland), SEPS a.s. (Slovakia), Vattenfall Europe Transmission GmbH (Germany) and Verbund – Austrian Power Grid AG (Austria).

Siemens IT Solutions and Services is an internationally leading provider of IT solutions and services. It covers the entire IT service chain from a single source, from consulting to system integration, right through to the management of IT infrastructures. In addition, Siemens IT Solutions and Services extends the range of offerings of the other Siemens Sectors to include IT solutions. With its comprehensive know-how and industry-specific knowledge, Siemens IT Solutions and Services provides measurable added value for its customers. Founded in January 2007, the new Siemens Division employs more than 41,000 people and posts annual sales of about 5.3 billion euros, of which over 70 percent are generated outside of the Siemens Sectors. More information at: www.siemens.com/it-solutions.