- sonnen opts for powercloud – a successful partnership between two digital leaders
- powercloud now offers change processes for feed-in locations, market communications (MPES) and billing for energy generators and direct marketers
- Key element underpinning decentralization, CO2 efficiency and further development of renewable energies
(powercloud, Offenburg, October 30, 2020) The energy market of the future will be shaped by decentralized energy generators such as privately operated photovoltaic systems or municipal wind farms. As a result, the energy management system has become much more complex, highlighting the urgent need for new regulatory standards. Against this background, the Federal Network Agency first adopted “Market processes for generating market locations (electricity)” (MPES) in 2013 in an effort to regulate billing and market processes between energy generators/suppliers and the network operator. A growing number of companies are now also offering attractive products aimed at private individuals with the view of selling self-generated energy profitably through the direct marketing system. powercloud provides the regulatory environment for this purpose.
Against this background, the significance of the current solution offered by powercloud becomes clear: the digitization specialists now have a tailor-made MPES implementation solution for suppliers, as Sam Schubert, Product Manager at powercloud, confirms: “This is a crucial step, because it adds key elements ‘energy generator’ and ‘direct marketing’ to the platform’s range of services. At the same time, we lay the foundation for all complementary processes on the part of the network operators. The MPES regulatory requirements can be implemented quickly and comprehensively with our solution,” says the Product Manager at powercloud.
The starting point for the development is the cooperation of powercloud with the Wildpoldsried-based sonnen, which as one of the world’s leading companies has already installed more than 60,000 smart battery storage systems for photovoltaic plants. This technology makes it possible to form decentralized energy communities under the sonnenCommunity umbrella, which offers its members the opportunity to self-generate, store and share energy with other members. This means that sonnenCommunity also operates on the market as an energy provider and complies with all regulatory requirements under MPES.
“We have relied on powercloud in other areas in the past. It was, therefore, a logical step for us to develop the current MPES solution using the powercloud platform. The key advantages of powercloud from our perspective are the consistent cloud approach and the secure MPES solution that is perfectly tailored to our requirements,” explains Matthias Dilthey, General Manager DACH at sonnen eServices.
The consulting and system integration partner was the IT consulting company CONUTI, which has many years of experience in the utility industry. As an app partner, CONUTI also offers so-called powerApps in the powercloud powerApp store covering a variety of topics, including tenant electricity, e-invoicing, sales portals and synchronization of market partner certificates and communication settings, etc.
The entire solution – including a complete master data model for energy generators and the adaptation to market communications – was created over a period of around nine months and now complements the core functions and features of powercloud. Thanks to fast scrum processes and the open architecture of powercloud, initial results were available early in the project.
“We are very proud of these results and the effective collaboration with sonnen,” emphasizes Marco Beicht, founder and CEO of powercloud. “With powercloud, we operate the leading cloud solution for the energy industry. The feed-in processes that are now available are a key element underpinning decentralized energy supply, CO2 efficiency and further development of renewable energies. They are crucial for the energy management system of the future,” says Marco Beicht.
About powercloud
With its platform of the same name, powercloud GmbH has been offering an open SaaS solution for the energy industry since 2012. With more than 200 customers, it is currently the market leader in Germany. Today, powercloud already manages around eight million contractual relationships while processing approx. six billion euros in sales, and a further 20 million contracts are currently being migrated. powercloud is the fastest-growing CRM and billing system in the industry, promotes the development of innovative energy brands, as well as green energy offers, and makes existing suppliers, network and metering point operators and municipal utilities fit for the IT and customer requirements of tomorrow.
About sonnen
In addition to the intelligent energy storage system sonnenBatterie, sonnen now also offers a variety of clean energy services. These include, for example, the networked energy community sonnenCommunity and the sonnenFlat scheme under which customers no longer had to pay for the actual cost of electricity incurred. Several investors from Europe, the USA and Asia have been involved in sonnen since 2013. Sonnen has already received numerous awards for its innovative products and rapid growth. Worldwide, sonnen has already installed over 60,000 solar batteries, making it the market leader in smart energy storage systems.
About CONUTI
CONUTI is an innovative IT consulting company with many years of experience in the utility industry. CONUTI has been working closely with powercloud on a number of implementation, migration and development projects since 2016. CONUTI provides support and development services in internal core teams directly at powercloud’s premises. CONUTI also offers apps and solutions for powercloud such as tenant power, e-invoicing, sales portals or automated market partner synchronization. CONUTI provides powercloud customers with end-to-end projects from the initial workshop, introduction, migration and training to the go-live with subsequent 24/7 technical and business support.
