October 19, 2022

GERMANY AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? YES WE CAN! GO-LIVE OF THE GAS SECURITY PLATFORM REALIZED BEFORE THE TARGET DATE.

The Bundesnetzagentur and the market area manager Trading Hub Europe GmbH [THE] have already announced it: The new Security Platform Gas went live on September 29, 2022, making it available to market participants ahead of the planned launch date. This was made possible by the combined expertise and efforts of the project members BMWK, BNetzA, THE, and Virtimo AG as the IT service provider under the overall project management of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action [BMWK].

What already reads complex on the basis of the participants, its scope only becomes really clear on closer look: international contracts, legal adjustments, countless stakeholders, more than 40 people involved from various government agencies and companies, as well as extensive functional expansions even in the last six months. The fact that the Security Platform Gas could even be provided ahead of schedule is due to the high level of commitment of all project participants.

“Above all, our interdisciplinary setup in a highly motivated team has made this possible.”

 

This is also confirmed by Dr.-Ing. Niklas Vespermann from Department 627 – Crisis Prevention, Resilience, Cybersecurity of the BNetzA: “Through our constructive cooperation, we have managed to implement this huge and complex IT project. I am convinced, above all, that our interdisciplinary setup in a highly motivated team made this possible.”

The new digital information platform makes an important contribution to ensuring security of supply and managing potential crisis situations for Bundesnetzagentur as the federal load dispatcher. As a central data platform, the Security Platform Gas provides real-time information on current and planned gas consumption in Germany. At the same time, the platform serves as a communication tool to get in touch in real time with the relevant players on the gas market – the 2,500 largest gas consumers, the balancing group managers and the gas network operators.

“This project shows that digital transformation is an essential key to mastering complex tasks.”

 

Christoph Kunze, Team Leader Consulting at Virtimo AG and Project Manager for the Security Platform Gas, summarizes: “The project can be best described by two aspects: Dynamics and digital transformation. There are only a few projects that operate in such a dynamic environment. I was therefore very pleased that we overcame the challenges together and demonstrated with the project that digital transformation is an essential key to mastering complex tasks – and in this case forms the basis of our security of supply.”

BMWK, BNetzA and Trading Hub Europe have already been working on this project since March 2021. As IT service provider, Virtimo AG has been responsible for the technological implementation of the Security Platform Gas since the beginning of 2022.

Further information

Further information can be found in the press release on the go-live of the Security Platform Gas on September 29, 2022 and in the recording of the information event on the Security Platform Gas held by Bundesnetzagentur on September 14, 2022. 

The Security Platform Gas can be found at  www.sicherheitsplattform-gas.de

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