There’s a lot of good, interesting observations from Gary Vasey in the book I mentioned yesterday.
My personal experience and insights are primarily concerned with how the implications of energy trading and risk management have impacted traditional system planning and bulk power procurement solicitations and analysis.
But the book has some great insights on the software side and the day to day operations side of trading. A few goodies:
- UtiliPoint’s research shows that the replacement rate for ETRM software is 2-3 times per 10-year cycle, compared to once in ten years for Customer Information Systems (CIS) for utilities.
- There is no single dominant player in the market
- This is not a traditional shrink-wrapped software market, nor even one that supports a traditional software model
- The nature of the utility’s physical assets (coal, diesel, hydro, etc.) and the geographical locations will dictate the majority of the sofware requirements at the detail level