Uninterrupted and round the clock uptime is at the heart of the Energy Market Company’s (EMC) mandate. As the operator for Singapore’s wholesale electricity market, EMC provides a transparent and competitive platform for electricity trading through the National Electricity Market of Singapore (NEMS).
EMC completes the connection between those who generate and produce electricity and those who sell it in Singapore. All of Singapore’s electricity is bought and sold through EMC’s robust and resilient NEMS trading platform.
Technology is a vital component to support EMC’s business agenda and maintaining a well-oiled IT infrastructure helps it cope with the changing needs of Singapore’s energy transition journey.
Since 2003, EMC has relied on capable and dependable technology partners such as IBM to provide and support its technology needs. The COVID-19 pandemic that brought the world to a near halt, activated EMC to go beyond the standard contingency plans to prepare for sudden or unexpected situations. IBM presented themselves as a key partner in helping EMC achieve greater efficiencies through the deployment of new technologies.
EMC’s IT infrastructure and trading platform was due for a technology refresh just as the country was emerging out of the pandemic. However, the disruptions in the global supply chain delayed the delivery of the IBM Power10 server, pushing back the planned rollout of the technology refresh.
During this critical period, the IBM team doubled down to ensure smooth operations and zero downtime. The team worked around the clock to ensure that the back-end system ran uninterrupted and triggers were quickly acted upon to avoid disruptions to trading. This was vital as power consumption had risen across hospitals, essential service providers and households due to work from home orders.
As an essential service provider, IBM was able to navigate the limitations by harnessing a combination of online and off-line methods to cater to EMC’s IT needs. This included creating new code and resolving technical bugs that cropped up.
Once the new IBM Power10 server was released, IBM rapidly galvanised the team to successfully complete the upgrade within nine months. The latest generation IBM Power10 processor technology would help ensure high performance, high availability, robust and resilient operations at EMC. By enhancing operational efficiency and reducing maintenance costs to maximise performance, EMC would also be able to ensure continuous support of the NEMS daily operations while creating headroom for future data and transaction growth.
Furthermore, the performance improvements in IBM Power10 would lower the overall cost of ownership of software applications used by EMC. The combined strength of scalability, high resiliency, performance and high availability of Power10 would enable EMC to operate more effectively 24/7. But EMC had also set its sights on better utilisation of forefront technology to augment the nation’s sustainability agenda.
Like numerous organisations, EMC’s resilience was tested during the pandemic period. The challenges and experiences encountered gave the team time to pause and take stock on future-proofing and contingency planning. How EMC responded to unforeseen circumstances sent a strong signal of its key role and highlighted the dependency of the industry on the NEMS. The high availability of the trading platform made all the difference.
With the completion of the first phase, IBM is now implementing the second phase to support the bids, offers and settlements of the NEMS trading platform. By optimising the apps, EMC also opened up opportunities to support peaks and business growth in the years ahead. This was enabled by the higher throughput, performance and migration function enhancements with IBM Power10 that provided EMC the flexibility to manage spikes in demand and capacity on the trading platform.
EMC’s robust and resilient IT backbone supported by IBM goes the distance in ensuring reliable yet affordable delivery of services to its stakeholders. More importantly, to be in compliance with service level agreement of zero downtime.
Energy Market Company Pte Ltd (EMC) (link resides outside of ibm.com) operates Singapore’s wholesale electricity market – Asia’s first liberalised electricity market. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore Exchange (SGX Group) (link resides outside of ibm.com) and was established in 2001.
As an exchange for wholesale electricity trading, EMC provides a transparent and competitive trading platform. Key activities include calculating prices, scheduling generation, clearing and settling market transactions as well as supporting governance of the market. Managed and operated by a staff of about 70 professionals, EMC transacted over S$15 billion of electricity products in 2023.
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