Easy-to-use spot price interface for Vaasan Sähkö

As electricity production is shifting to wind power of variable capacity, hourly pricing will play an increasingly important role for both private consumers and businesses. Wapice implemented an easy-to-use interface for displaying and using spot prices of electricity in Vaasan Sähkö’s products.

Customers play an increasingly active role in the energy system, where they can support the transition from fossil electricity to green electricity by managing their consumption properly. This has also been noted in Vaasan Sähkö. When customers know the next day’s hourly prices, they can save large sums by concentrating their electricity consumption on the times when electricity is most available and cheapest.

In addition to its traditional, purely spot-price-based products, Vaasan Sähkö Oy has developed a new product, Vaikuttaja, for its customers, which combines a predictable base price with variable-priced electricity. The Vaikuttaja product allows consumers to make significant savings compared to a fixed energy tariff by scheduling their consumption outside peak hours. However, those who use electricity more impulsively may have to pay a higher energy bill. In March 2023, the product will enter the pilot phase.

Exchange prices in the online service of Vaasan Sähkö.

When designing the online service for the new product, Vaasan Sähkö faced a problem with the availability of price data from the electricity exchange. The price data is owned by Nord Pool, a pan-European electricity exchange based in Norway. When buying electricity from Nord Pool, the companies selling electricity will be informed of the exchange price, but they cannot publish the price data without paying Nord Pool.

Vaasan Sähkö has developed its online services together with Wapice and the provision of price data to its customers came up in a joint meeting. Wapice acquired the rights to Nord Pool’s exchange prices and developed a new interface, Wapice Spot, through which Vaasan Sähkö can access prices quickly and easily. Vaasan Sähkö has been satisfied with the process.

The spot price implementation project went very well and in good cooperation with Wapice. We at Vaasan Sähkö are very happy with the end result.

Kimmo Siljander, System Specialist, Vaasan Sähkö

“The idea behind Wapice Spot is to make the price of electricity on the exchange easily accessible to all those who need it, now and in the future. Customers also benefit from the fact that we can share service costs between several companies. Just as we do with our energy reporting service in EcoReaction’s multitenancy environment,” says Sami Pelkonen, Product Manager for Energy Reporting at Wapice.

Those who need exchange electricity prices can use the Wapice Spot service to obtain day-ahead prices, and the cost is determined by usage.

The SPOT price is a day-ahead price. The hourly prices for the following day are determined once a day based on bids from electricity buyers and asking prices from electricity producers.

The intraday market complements the electricity market. Producers and buyers are constantly trading to balance the relationship between production and demand. The hourly prices are therefore subject to change throughout the day.

“Exploiting the day-ahead market in the electricity trade is a natural next step in the optimisation process. We believe that the market will see several contract types with some link to spot prices. In the future, it is very likely that other types of electricity markets, such as the intraday market, could also play a role in the price formation of consumers’ electricity contracts, which would allow customers to support the optimisation of the electricity system with their own consumption,” Kimmo Siljander of Vaasan Sähkö considers.

Wapice has already prepared for the introduction of intraday prices in electricity consumption planning and reporting. “In practice, the Intraday interface is technically similar to the spot price interface. We are ready when it is needed,” comments Sami Pelkonen of Wapice.