Progress Ventures, Inc., a subsidiary of Progress Energy, Inc., has deployed The Structure Group's nMarket software suite to support its business in restructured wholesale markets. Progress Ventures installed nMarket to support generation offers, scheduling and shadow settlements in the PJM and Midwest markets, streamlining what once were manual activities and making them auditable, repeatable and stable.
"We recognize regional markets are expanding and have identified new opportunities within PJM and the Midwest. With nMarket, we can focus on analysis and decision making instead of supporting manual processes," said Mike Settlage, manager-Portfolio Management for Progress Ventures.
NMarket manages the complexity of the market transactions and settlement calculations.
"With nMarket, we are in a better position to respond to market conditions, and have a better understanding of the results," Settlage added. "We performed an analysis of available solutions in the marketplace and chose nMarket. The Structure Group has an impressive understanding of the markets' rules, and they have built that knowledge into the nMarket software."
The nMarket solution fits within Progress Ventures' existing solution framework, isolating other systems from changes in market rules and specifications.
In evolving regional wholesale power markets, nMarket provides market-leading bid-to-bill capabilities for efficiently interacting with independent system operators and regional transmission organizations. Through its six modules, the product addresses bidding, scheduling, dispatch and settlement functions between traders and market operators, reducing the time and money necessary to complete energy transactions. Structure recently added front-office capabilities to nMarket. Clients can now utilize nMarket for deal capture and scheduling functionality to support business needs.
"In less than six years, nMarket has gone from being an individual client solution for a unique market problem to the clear market leader," David Hallam, Structure founder and CEO, said. "With more than 100 deployments, nMarket continues its dominance over competitors and provides functionality for scheduling, bidding, and settling more generation and load than all of the other competing commercial solutions combined. In addition, Structure is the only vendor that offers true multimarket coverage across eight North American markets."
Progress Ventures' implementation represents another competitive energy company selecting the nMarket platform to improve its business operations in restructured markets. nMarket has the flexibility to support asset and non-asset participation, offering effective communication with market operators and reduced integration efforts so clients can focus on internal capabilities and other areas of operation. nMarket's automated functions reduce the chance of manual errors and are maintained to adapt to the constant changes in market rules and protocols.
