The California Independent System Operator, a not-for-profit public benefit corporation that manages the flow of electricity along California’s open-market wholesale power grid, has standardized on the Actuate platform as its centralized reporting infrastructure.
The Actuate platform has been used to develop and manage 12 critical applications for California ISO including the self-service Open Access Same-Time Information System (OASIS) accessible on the corporation’s external website. OASIS provides energy companies with real-time, on-line access to scheduled energy loads, forecasts and procurement results, which enhance energy market effectiveness by helping companies accurately and competitively price energy.
California ISO is the impartial link between power plants and the utilities that serve more than 30 million consumers. As the independent intermediary, California ISO is tasked with balancing the supply and demand for electricity for about 80% of California. With such a large amount of consumers reliant on its service, real-time access to energy information is crucial to companies that use the California ISO system.
The Actuate platform should help us enhance services and provide consistent information internally and to our market participants," said Steve Berberich, vice president and CIO at California ISO. A prime example is the California ISO OASIS system, which receives 100,000 hits per day, and helps level the playing field in the energy market by delivering essential, real-time information regarding current and forecasted energy demand in an open, online forum. Using the Actuate customer self-service reporting application, energy companies can view both real-time and historical data to better plan production and competitively price the energy that they produce.
As part of an initiative to enhance its services to consumers while at the same time minimizing costs, California ISO also formed an Actuate Center of Excellence (COE) in the summer of 2005 to oversee the development and launch of Actuate as the California ISO reporting standard. The Actuate COE provides training, templates and corporate standards for reporting, ensuring consistent data is shared across the entire organization. Twelve Actuate applications have been rolled out to over 1200 internal users representing a wide range of business groups – from human resources to customer relations and engineering – to outside energy companies using the California ISO OASIS system.
