Energy Web data exchange now available on Azure

Energy Web has released its decentralised data exchange as a ‘software as a service’ on Microsoft’s Azure marketplace.

The release, which follows the December release of the RPC (remote procedure call) nodes on the AWS marketplace, represents the next step in Energy Web’s ongoing plan to make its solutions available as ‘software as a service’ and enable their adoption without the need for specialised technical resources.

The Data Exchange Client Gateway is a key component of the Data Exchange solution, providing the UI and APIs for interacting with shared messaging infrastructure to send, receive and authenticate messages.

A main value proposition of the Client Gateway is providing a single, standardised integration method for many independent organisations to exchange information across various messaging channels, Energy Web states.

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The Client Gateway was developed in support of the data exchange solutions deployed in two projects in Australia – EDGE in Victoria, New South Wales and Symphony in Western Australia – investigating the potential of customer owned distributed energy resource marketplaces.

A key element is the role for a shared industry data hub to enable better utilisation of the resources by improving coordination between the market operator AEMO, distribution network utilities and aggregators with enhanced visibility on the resources and consistency across the market participants.

The two projects started in 2022 and while still ongoing, Energy Web reports that the overall results have validated the value of a shared data hub.

However, a key lesson learned was that integration needed to be simpler. The Client Gateway is an independent application that each market participant runs within an environment of their choice and the process of deploying and maintaining them across multiple companies was complex and required specialised technical knowledge.

In addition, coordinating initial installations and ongoing maintenance and update releases also was found to be challenging and time-consuming.

With its availability on Azure and potential application in multiple markets, the need for the specialised IT resources is obviated, while the time to install the application is reduced by 90%.

Additionally, users are able to natively integrate the Client Gateway application with other Azure services that they need to integrate with the shared data hub.

Energy Web anticipates continuing to expand its marketplace offerings ‘as a service’ via managed service, third-party resellers and self-hosted options.