The Singapore Electricity Market

Singapore is considered Asia’s first liberalised electricity market. Singapore’s journey through liberalisation began in October 1995, when industry assets were corporatised and put on a commercial footing to facilitate competition and as a precursor to eventual privatisation.

As Singapore progresses with deregulation of its electricity market, new energy retailers that move the fastest stand to gain an advantage. As the Energy Market Authority (EMA) further lowers the threshold for eligibility to reach full contestability, more consumers will be able to choose their energy provider and benefit from cost savings and more flexible contracts. New entrants, like PacificLight, need to be ready to embrace future business opportunities in the market.

PacificLight Energy

PacificLight Energy is considered one of the most competitive energy retailers in Singapore. They are backed by their own state-of-the-art 800MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (“CCGT”) power plant, which is owned and operated by PacificLight Power.

PacificLight Energy has already successfully established itself in Singapore’s electricity retail market providing electricity to both commercial and industrial customers. PacificLight Energy’s value proposition lies in providing customers with the flexibility that allows them to choose an energy plan that supports their specific operational, risk management and financial priorities.

To enable PacificLight Energy to service the wide-ranging needs of its customers requires a robust and flexible system.

Business Situation

After careful consideration of the various systems suitable for the Singapore energy retail market and the appropriate implementation partner, the choice fell on MECOMS with Avanade as an implementation partner.

The Microsoft business platform with MECOMS for Energy & Utilities has been chosen as the retailer’s robust business solution to provide metering, contract management and customer billing functions to serve PacificLight’s customers. It was considered the most suitable platform for PacificLight to meet customer’s needs of today and in future.

Avanade as global MECOMS partner already had extensive experience with electricity projects around the world and provided a dedicated local team which could translate the local market rules into the system requirements as well as providing frontline maintenance support to PacificLight.

Avanade’s RapidResults methodology ensured a speedy implementation, needed for PacificLight to be ready to do business as deregulation accelerated across the industry.

Avanade developed, tested and deployed the service on a private cloud via its partnership with SaaSPlaza, a global cloud company specializing in Microsoft business solutions hosting.

During the fast-track implementation, MECOMS was also integrated with PacificLight’s financial backbone to facilitate financial transactions and invoice management. This provided PacificLight with the metering, contract management and retail market billing systems it required, as well as integration with the MSSL systems operated by SP Services. Avanade ensured and confirmed the system‘s compliance, which also included a successful market certification phase during the project.

Results Realized

Avanade was able to successfully deploy the MECOMS solution in a very short timeframe, through the effective use of product and market expertise, cloud technology as well as its offshore delivery capabilities. The platform was brought operational as scheduled and MSSL confirmed that PacificLight Energy was fully compliant with the relevant market rules and ready to do business as an authorized energy retailer in Singapore.

One of the key factors to the success was the aim of the project team to deploy the MECOMS solution without any customizations and to stay as close as possible to the “out-of-the-box” standard utility business processes through the powerful standard configuration capabilities, which enables the customer to further benefit from future product upgrades at minimal upgrade risk.

Avanade called on the expertise of its Global Delivery Network (GDN) to enable a fast project ramp-up. The GDN is a pool of thousands of professionals around the world that can be rapidly deployed according to the skills and experience needed to get the job done.

The Microsoft business platform with MECOMS for Energy & Utilities has provided PacificLight with the business support system that will take them into the future, as the Singapore power market continues to evolve. The system supports both contract writing and its power trading requirements are able to configure new products and pricing structures to be responsive to changing market requirements and to stay competitive by being able to introduce new packages into the market.

Integration with existing financial systems positions their operations to realize cost efficiencies with systems that are designed to scale as the business grows.

With these systems in place, PacificLight is well positioned to pursue its business growth objectives of becoming the leading energy provider in Singapore’s dynamic energy market.

MECOMS Partner Avanade

Avanade as global MECOMS partner already had extensive experience with electricity projects around the world and provided a dedicated local team which could translate the local market rules into the system requirements as well as providing frontline maintenance support to PacificLight.

Avanade’s RapidResults methodology ensured a speedy go to market, needed for PacificLight to be ready to do business as deregulation accelerated across the industry.

“With MECOMS PacificLight Energy now has the necessary IT system in place to support our primary objective of providing our customers with flexible pricing plans that meet their needs coupled with first class customer service.”

– Geraldine Tan, General Manager, PacificLight Energy Pte Ltd –