Energy Data Management System

Energy Management System

Online system for collecting and managing energy data.

This software was developed for a Germany-based company that offers a set of products to manage energy data. Normally, a counter is used for measuring electricity consumption. The software we developed allows a Web-based interface using to manage the amount of energy that goes through the counter located in a certain place and store statistics of such usage of the counter.

Electricity counters are installed on the consumer's side and can be connected to energy producer's data center through a modem, electrical lines or even wireless connection, GPS for example (standard for cellular phones), which periodically report about electrical traffic through these devices.

In 1999 a law that allows energy market liberalization was adopted in Germany, which means that different companies or private persons may act as participants in the energy market. This caused growth of activity in the energy market and became a reason for development of complex market infrastructure.

These data are collected in the central (Oracle) database. EMS is a Web-based software (written in JSP) which allows useful management of these data. Using this software, all types of customers of this system can login (using browser) into the system and perform the necessary actions:

Energy Producer (for example a large electricity-producing company) can manage all its customers as end consumers, also re-sellers and third-party interested participants. Our Ssoftware allows users to purchase the required amount of energy for certain period of time.
Energy Consumers can see their expenses and statistics, they also can do purchases and plan their expenses. For example, it is possible to setup a configuration, where a small shop acting as a consumer requires no energy on summer weekends and just does not purchase it.
Energy Re-sellers Energy Re-sellers can effectively manage their purchase and sale, which also can be easily done online.

All users can see the data that go through their electricity counters online, as well as the relevant statistical reports and the consumption summary.
A well-developed market model for the customer's structure allows to represent data grouped by the customer and define their role in the market.

The system covers all necessary functions allowing set-up of new users, their access rights, logging of their activities. The incoming information is updated online and collected from different sources. It is possible to manage data sources, administer user rights and set the rules for data calculating.

In this project we used our Java applets:

the map displays online the updated information about the town you have selected;
the tree-table combines hierarchical tree structure with table columns for data representation, the columns can even be sorted and resized;
the chart displays the data from the database making some aggregation calculations.

Tools and technologies used:
Database-driven actions are stored using store procedures and are simply called from JSP templates. On the client side, Java applets are used intensively, allowing to implement more advanced GUI functionality.

Time spent: 140 man-months.