- Big bang migration sets the pace of change
- Agile processes in the backend guarantee more flexibility
(powercloud, Offenburg, May 03, 2022) With almost 40,000 members, Prokon is Germany’s largest energy cooperative. Everyone can become a member of the joint venture, invest in wind farms and thus support the transition to better climate protection – an outstanding example of those innovative business models that have been structurally changing the German energy market for several years. At the same time, Prokon has been active in the market as an independent energy supplier since 2013 and supplies around 33,000 customers with self-produced green electricity. In addition, there are other offers such as electricity for commercial customers and biogas for end users. The latter has been implemented in the entrepreneurial backend with the aid of powercloud since the start of 2021. The cooperative has now also changed its billing processes for green electricity for end consumers – since March of this year, this control has also been carried out with the help of powercloud.
As Frank Kalliora, Head of Energy Trading at Prokon, explains, the new solution replaces the in-house software development that was previously in use at the cooperative and had reached its technological limits: “Our green electricity offer of 100 percent wind energy has been very successful on the market for years. However, there is considerable potential that we are not yet exploiting; for example, creating new products based on the existing system proved too complex. To accomplish this, we need a backend that enables flexible and automated processes. powercloud can now guarantee us this level of quality. There is also a cooperative approach: With the aid of the powerApp store from powercloud, we can integrate the expertise of various service providers into our own solution and precisely tailor the whole system to our needs. That convinced us.” For example, based on this system, Prokon uses iXenso’s output management for customer communication, the powerData IntegrationLayer, as well as work digital’s solution “Start Service”. The associated automation of processes in the energy economy ensures better speed and decreased workload for the cooperative.
It is also interesting to have a look at the processes surrounding the billing conversion at Prokon, because private electricity customers’ data were transferred to the new platform as part of a large “big bang migration” in March. So, everything was migrated “in one fell swoop” – mind you, this was only about five months after the start of the electricity project in November last year. The migration process was accompanied by powercloud partner Natuvion. The company specializes in the transformation of data to new platforms. As Zoran Petrovic, Managing Director and Chief Growth Officer at powercloud, explains: “When we implement our solutions, we always rely on a teamwork of specialists who support us with their expertise. The method of operation is tried and tested, works completely smoothly, and ensures speed in many specific areas. Overall, we are very pleased to be able to support Prokon’s innovative business model in this way, because we see ourselves as facilitators of an innovative energy future. Prokon’s offer fits perfectly with this.”
About Prokon
With almost 40,000 members, Prokon Regenerative Energien eG is the largest energy cooperative in Germany. The company’s particular focus is on generating and supplying renewable-energy-based electricity in close proximity to the citizen.
Prokon was founded in 1995 and can call upon more than 25 years of experience in the renewable energy sector, the most recent six of which have been as a citizens’ cooperative. Today, the development, planning, and implementation of onshore wind farms, as well as their subsequent technical and commercial management, are among Prokon’s core competencies, as is supplying private household customers with green electricity nationwide. Prokon currently operates around 70 wind farms in Germany, Poland and Finland, with a total capacity of almost 800 MW. For more information visit: www.prokon.net
