Equigy’s Common Front Door based on a Canonical Data Model

Equigy is developing the One Common Front Door to simplify access to European electricity markets for new aggregators. This enables easier access for new aggregators to existing flex energy markets, allows aggregators to operate at European level and opens the market for DSO’s to use flex energy to balance their local grid. It is also important to offer TSO’s a transition path to the future avoiding disruption with respect to the underlying TSO systems.

Realizing the One Common Front Door therefore requires standardized interfaces based on existing standards and governed and maintained by well established organizations.

At the heart of Equigy’s transformative approach lies its commitment to data-centric processing. By seamlessly managing the exchange of Market Documents within a network of flexibility service providers (FSPs), distribution system operators (DSOs), transmission system operators (TSOs), and buyers, Equigy provides the critical infrastructure to enable efficient energy markets.

This ecosystem is empowered by Equigy’s innovative routing and data transformation mechanism, which does more than streamline data exchange— it could bring together valuable data from diverse sources that could contribute to better coordination and grid control.

To address the complexities of pan-European market integration with TSO’s, FSP’s and DSO’s,   Equigy has embraced a Canonical Data Model (CDM). This CDM is the heart of the common frontdoor, i.e. the one standard for market parties to connect to all these diverse flex markets. It is based on the existing standards IEC and the ENTSOe ESMP and has the following advantages:

1. Less interfaces and therefore less effort to integrate new parties: onboarding a new party requires a single interface to the CDM only and avoids the creation of specific interfaces to other participants. E.g. an FSP wanting to provide flex service to different TSO’s does not need to know the specifics of each TSO.
2. Simpler interface logic: only translation between the standard CDM and the participant (TSO) format is needed. E.g. without a CDM every FSP is required to know and translate the interface to a specific TSO. This logic needs to be duplicated with every FSP/
3. Scalability and Flexibility: With fewer interdependencies, Equigy’s system can scale efficiently to accommodate market growth and evolving participant needs. It also creates the opportunity for TSO’s for a stepwise migration to a future distributed eco-system.
4. Consistency and Data Quality: The adoption of a unified model ensures higher data integrity, fostering trust among network participants and enabling advanced applications such as AI-driven optimization and market analysis.

Equigy’s  canonical data model is based on the existing and widely adopted information standards of IEC-62325 and the derived ENTSOe ESMP.

Having the Equigy’s Canonical Data Model as the European standard for Energy Market Parties, country specific translation and validation logic will be developed to integrate with existing TSO systems. Equigy acknowledges the inherent challenges of implementing a CDM and has devised practical strategies to mitigate them:

1. Design Overhead: The development of a robust CDM requires domain expertise and alignment with existing country-specific interfaces. Equigy has systematically collected and mapped these interfaces against IEC and ENTSOe standards, ensuring that its CDM is both comprehensive and adaptable.
2. Performance Overheads:: To minimize latency, Equigy focuses on reducing transformation complexity while balancing technical correctness and business rule evolution. Equigy’s CBP will avoid duplication of interface validations already executed by FSP’s and TSO’s.
3. Governance: Equigy’s governance framework integrates business consultants, solution architects, and technical architects to ensure the CDM evolves in tandem with market needs, adhering to stringent change management processes.

Equigy’s Domain Architecture

Equigy has adopted the concept of accepted business domain architectures for Organization, Resource Registration, Pre-Qualification, Bidding, Planning, Activation, Measurements and Settlement. This is reflected in the CDM resulting in a different CDM component for each domain.

Way of Working

As of today Equigy has captured and analyzed the definition and details of classes and root classes of  Market Documents in the domains Organization, Bidding and Activation and mapped them against the classes and root classes of IEC, ENTSOe ESMP, ERPP and EAD used in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.  This includes attribute information for the standard attribute name (based on IEC, ENTSOe), its standard position, the multiplicity, type and description.

More than 10 different interfaces per country will be analyzed, resulting in more than 50 analysis documents for the known 5 countries. That is the reason why all information is stored in an Architecture Repository. This will protect the quality and consistency of information captured from many sources at different moments in time. It also provides the means for detailed analysis and reporting, so that a pragmatic CDM can be defined. The CDM will contain Country Specific Elements and Attributes to maximize the alignment with current TSO systems.

Examples for repository reports are the definition of the CDM, a model with its attributes and descriptions, a report showing what CDM attributes are used in each country, country specific reports for data mapping, and a report showing the compliance with and deviations from the ENTSOe ESMP.

Our findings and conclusions

1. It has been acknowledged that ENTSOe ESMP definitions are well aligned with the more generic IEC standard.
2. Equigy has defined Market_Documents for the domains bidding, activation and measurements, based on modified ENTSOe ESMP definitions;
3. Equigy has defined the canonical model for Organization and Contractual Agreements between flex suppliers and TSO’s based on GS1.
4. The identifying part of Market_Documents (IEC class Core::IdentifiedObject ) with its attributes are used in a consistent manner across different countries.
5. Subclasses in Market_Documents, such as time_series, time_period, reason, series_period are recognized in different Market_Documents, but not always used in a consistent manner: attribute names might be different and position in interfaces are varying.
6. Country-specific attributes will be added to Equigy’s Canonical Data Model compared with the ENTSOe ESMP standard; this provides the flexibility needed to meet country specific interfaces requirements.

The mapping of the country specific Market Documents against ENTSOe ESMP and Equigy’s Canonical Data Model, provides us with the (basic) country transformation rules.

To summarize:  the first domains have been modeled in a canonical data model, differences are unraveled and translations defined. The remaining domains are being added. After that is done, Equigy will have a commonly applicable and standards-based data model to facilitate FSP’s to access several TSO markets via one standardized data exchange in the common frontdoor.

Expecting first draft version available end of Q1 2025 followed by technical realization. In the second half of this year, the common frontdoor is expected to be live for the first markets.