Crisis prevention in record time: the Gas Security Platform.
How THE safeguards the national gas supply via a highly available platform.
Highlights
- Go-live ahead of schedule: in the middle of the energy crisis, the highly complex platform went live ahead of its deadline.
- Goodbye spreadsheet chaos: rather than calling 2,500 companies, all data flows in fully automatically in real time.
- Automated workflow: from live data import to calculation and digitally signed PDF delivery.
- Disaster-proof cloud: maximum security, IP gating and triple geo-redundancy safeguard the SiPla.
- Teamplay for Europe: around 4,000 actors ensure gas solidarity with neighbors via a smart auction matrix.
Fact Sheet
| CLIENT | Trading Hub Europe GmbH |
| SECTOR | Energy |
| HEAD OFFICE | Düsseldorf | Germany |
| EMPLOYEES | approx. 110 |
| Purpose | As the market area manager, THE ensures the physical balancing of gas grids and a seamless gas trade in Germany [„keep in balance“]. |
Missions accomplished
- Connectivity
- Automation
Smart technology
- Virtimo Digitalization Suite
Digital, dynamic, three-dimensional.
When deep tech, government agencies, and top speed in the energy sector come together: for our client Trading Hub Europe [THE], the Gas Security Platform was created as a digital command center for Germany’s gas supply – in close cooperation with the German Federal Network Agency [BNetzA] as well as the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action [BMWK] [today the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, BMWE], initially involved at the project’s start. An agile sprint that proves that digitization in Germany can truly build momentum.
The core task of the Gas Security Platform [SiPla] is easily explained: if there is a threat of a national gas shortage, the German Federal Network Agency acts as the federal load dispatcher and receives the necessary tools through the platform to coordinate sovereign interventions in the market and avert a collapse of the gas grid. The system integrates the consumption data of large industrial customers in real time to weigh potential savings and keep social and economic damage to a minimum.
From paper concept to live sprint.
Although European gas solidarity was already based on the EU’s “Security of Supply” Regulation from 2017, the global situation changed abruptly in February 2022 – and the project’s concrete implementation mutated overnight, from a regulatory precautionary measure into a critical focus area of national security.
The mission: a digital tool for emergencies, right on time for the heating season. The biggest hurdle? There was simply no central registry of large industrial consumers. In a true 2.5 months long feat of strength, Virtimo built a two-stage digital data campaign from the ground up. The result: valid master data from 345 network operators and around 2,500 of the largest industrial companies [technical connection capacity ≥ 10 MWh/h] were securely stored in the system.
Without the Gas Security Platform, it would have been extremely difficult to manage a gas supply shortage in a controlled manner in an emergency. In the past, this kind of process was handled via an Excel spreadsheet with countless companies that would have had to be contacted manually by phone and fax in a crisis.
Dennis Klemann
Consultant | Virtimo AG
Automation is key!
To make the impossible possible in a short time, the wheel was not reinvented; instead, proven components of the THE customer portal were adapted and massively expanded.
Based on the VIRTIMO SUITE, a fully automated end-to-end workflow is run in the event of a crisis: the SiPla delivers live load profiles to an external optimization tool of the German Federal Network Agency [BNetzA], retrieves the mathematical results, and simultaneously transmits digitally signed individual directives in PDF format directly to market participants via the agency’s servers. In parallel, reduced gas volumes are automatically transmitted to the Virtual Trading Point [VTP] as adjusted nominations.
The project was a collaborative effort to pull off a massive, governmental task. […] With it, we have created a digital foundation in the Emergency Plan for Gas in Germany that is truly built to last. This makes me and the entire team particularly proud.
Christoph Kunze
Team Lead Consulting | Virtimo AG
IP gating instead of open doors.
Because we are operating in the KRITIS sector [critical infrastructures], the highest demands are placed on the platform’s security. Extensive penetration tests are a part of the security concept just as much as time-based two-factor authentication [2FA] and strict IP gating, which ensures that logins for German Federal Network Agency accounts only work from within the agency’s network.
Currently, the platform is migrating to the cloud as part of Trading Hub Europe’s cloud first strategy. Through a distribution of the persistence layer across three independent availability zones [geo-redundancy] and a deployment via infrastructure as code, the system is set up to be disaster-proof.
A crisis-proof system for Europe.
The go-live took place on September 29, 2022 – ahead of the official target date. Today, the SiPla successfully manages an active pool of around 4,000 registered companies. And because good solutions catch on, the platform was expanded into a European solidarity platform in 2024 as planned.
It now digitally connects Germany with nine neighboring states via a clever, two-stage model: first, participants can post voluntary gas offers, which neighboring countries can exclusively reserve for two minutes via an interactive “shopping cart” before making a binding purchase [Stage 1]. If that is not sufficient, BNetzA intervenes with sovereign authority [Stage 2].
To ensure that every move is seamless in an emergency, the entire system is regularly put through its paces during a major crisis exercise with real market actors.
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.
Dr.-Ing. Niklas Vespermann
Crisis Prevention Department | German Federal Network Agency
Let’s get to work!
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