Client’s Challenging Situation:
20 years ago, in the early days of Canadian electricity deregulation, pricing data for the Hourly Ontario Electricity Price [HOEP] was difficult to find/access in real time…it was difficult to access day-old data. At that time electricity trading was in its infancy. New markets were developing for unregulated energy trading. Contracts for the sale and purchase of electricity were under development. Enron was wreaking marketplace havoc.
Scope of the Problem:
An energy management firm wanted to provide price data comparisons to its industrial clients. They wanted to use the Hourly Ontario Electricity Price [HOEP] as a benchmark. They wanted to be on the forefront of providing electricity price data, yet they [and the rest of the energy sector in Ontario] were struggling to provide anything close to real-time data.
Our Solution:
We knew a great deal about natural gas commodity pricing because we had been trading in both the physical markets and the futures markets since the mid-1990s. We also knew the places where energy data could be accessed, and we had the ability to create software that could extract the HOEP data. We did that, and we created the first “picture” that showed up-to-date, daily HOEP prices.
The Value Delivered:
Our energy-management client had the ability to show its industrial clients up to date HOEP data before the Ontario electricity utilities were able to post the data. The energy management firm had “bragging rights” and the ability to gain market share in the nascent, deregulated Ontario electricity marketplace.