Roadmap to 2025 & Beyond
Transforming Energy Trading with Empire - Part three of a three part series
An introduction to the series
In a new three-part series, we’re diving into the complete story of Empire. Part one explores the internal and external drivers that led to the creation of the award-winning trading and nomination platform, as well as the journey to design and deploy the platform in just 18 months. Part two explores the platform’s first twelve months in the market and part three explores what the future holds for Empire.
Roadmap to 2025 & Beyond
“The first year of Empire has really only just touched the surface of what we believe is possible”, BritNed’s Commercial Operations & Planning Manager, Nils Teipel, explains enthusiastically as he contemplates what’s next for the market-leading energy trading platform he helped to create.
“Just as we’ve continued to make incremental improvements to Empire in the 12 months since its launch to continuously raise the customer experience bar, and meet traders’ needs as the market continues to evolve, we are now continuing our focus on what’s next for the platform in 2025 and beyond”, Nils explains.
The first year of Empire has really only just touched the surface of what we believe is possible.
Improving Buy Now 1.0 with Empire 4.0
Empire 4.0 was released fully in the Production Environment in early October this year, but, Nils reveals, “the team are already deep into the development of Empire 6.0 which we are expecting to be ready for our customers by March 2025.”
Customer feedback and consultation has played a key role in the development of Empire since its launch, and “has also been crucial in helping us define many of the main changes to the platform that we will roll out over the coming months and into next year”, says Nils.
He adds: “Empire 4.0 is already delivering some immediate improvements to our Buy Now auctions, including the new Buy-Now auction screen that automatically filters for relevant and available Buy Now offers. The API has also been optimised, leading to a significantly improved performance and, once again, the updates have been implemented following feedback from participants. Building on this, 2025 will see the release of even deeper improvements to the Buy Now auction.”
Improving the Financial Settlement Process
In November 2024, Empire 5.0 will support an update to the financial settlement processes to streamline and simply the settlement processes.
Nils explains: “Our current framework will be reimagined to include a Netting Statement, which will summarise the net position of the three possible invoice documents (a standard invoice, a self-billed invoice, or a credit invoice) and clarify the final position, which will help to simplify the process further for our customers and give them even greater convenience.
We deliberately designed Empire like this – to be flexible and enable us to respond to shifts within the market. It’s exciting to consider the possibilities of what we could do in the future.
Launching Empire 6.0 and Buy Now 2.0
“Another major update scheduled for 2025 is the launch of Buy Now 2.0 as part of Empire 6.0, following the warm market reception enjoyed by Buy Now 1.0 which we launched to market in April this year”, adds Nils. “The team has conducted a series of extensive review sessions with auction participants to identify and prioritise improvements, and we’re already in the process of working these into the 2.0 dashboard ready for its release.”
“Currently, Buy Now offers are made available in pre-determined blocks, which are usually 5MW, although during our Early Return to Service following our planned summer outage, we did make blocks of 25MW available.
“What’s great is that in Buy Now 2.0, under the release of Empire 6.0, participants will be able to request custom blocks of MWs against the Market Time Unit (MTU) and direction they require.
“This flexibility is a huge benefit for our customers, and we’ve worked hard to make it a part of Buy Now 2.0 because we are driven by our commitment to ensuring all BritNed customers have the greatest level of choice, convenience and control when they trade with us.”
Introducing 30 Min MTU Intraday Auctions
Looking further ahead into Q4 2025, plans are also afoot for the introduction of a 30-minute MTU (Market Time Unit) Intraday auction, following a market consultation period that took place in June, alongside other interconnectors connecting to Great Britain.
If approved, this is expected to deliver several trading benefits, including closer alignment with the European 15-minute markets, and more accurate allocation and nomination possibilities to better serve market needs.
Nils explains: “The team is very excited about the benefits of a 30minute MTU Intraday auction option, as it will open up additional trading possibilities for our customers and support improved balancing and market opportunity utilisation.
“This is a major change though and, if there is an agreement with ESO, it will require system testing and an update to BritNed’s Access Rules in 2025 before we could be release it. But we’re ready, the team is ready, Empire is already ready – and we’re excited by the prospect of this moving forward and becoming a reality.
“If we really push ourselves to think even longer term, there is definitely a scope for possibilities like Day Ahead MTU auctions. Empire has been designed in a modular fashion to be highly flexible and the technology is ready to support significant shifts in the industry to ensure it is able to be at the forefront of and maintain growth and development in the industry.
“We deliberately designed Empire like this – to be flexible and enable us to respond to shifts within the market. It’s exciting to consider the possibilities of what we could do in the future.”
There will also be some new auctions products being released across Q4 2024 and Q1 – 2 2025, all made possible thanks to the initial design structure of Empire. These will be announced at the appropriate times.
We’re ready, the team is ready, Empire is already ready – and we’re excited by the prospect of this moving forward and becoming a reality.
In Conclusion
“It’s been a special and fulfilling project bring Empire to life. I’m incredibly proud of the team at BritNed and Supercharge for their dedication, innovation and collaboration”, says Nils.
“I think we can look back and agree we’ve produced something unique and genuinely focused on the customer. But I’m equally excited to see how the developments in our roadmap for Empire further support our customers by offering more flexibility and control in how they trade – and, how we’ll develop Empire even further as the market continues to evolve over time. To think that during 2025 or beyond, we could release an auction product or feature we’ve not currently conceived, thanks to Empire’s unique foundations and the amazing team working everyday on it, is simply incredible.”
