Grid- and energy-optimisation software company Open Access Energy’s (OAE’s) Energypro wheeling software platform has completed September’s allocation and settlement for renewable-energy company SolarAfrica’s 114 MW SunCentral 1 plant, in the Northern Cape.

The platform has divided 7.57 GWh of energy among three commercial and industrial customers, each on its own contract. That makes SunCentral 1 the first utility-scale, multi-buyer wheeling project in Africa to be settled on locally developed, purpose-built software.

Most wheeling arrangements link one plant to one buyer. OAE and SolarAfrica explain that SunCentral 1, which reached commercial operation in September, shares a single plant’s output across a group of customers on the national grid, each with its own power purchase agreement (PPA), its own pattern of use and its own share of the electricity.

The companies note that Energypro was built to settle exactly that kind of arrangement. 

Each month, Energypro takes in the plant’s generation, each customer’s consumption at its delivery points and the terms of each customer’s PPA with SolarAfrica.

It then allocates the plant’s electricity across the customers, starting with those who have fixed-volume commitments. It prepares the nomination information SolarAfrica submits to State-owned Eskom and at month-end produces the settlement data SolarAfrica uses to bill each customer.

That month-end process is what the whole arrangement depends on. The parties explain that they need to agree how much of the plant’s electricity went to each customer, on which terms and what each party owes. If they cannot agree, the arrangement stops working, however well the plant performs.

As more privately generated electricity is wheeled to multiple buyers, the companies argue that the systems that allocate, reconcile and settle it are becoming as important to a project’s bankability as the plant itself.

“South Africa is building a new electricity market, and it shouldn’t have to run on software designed for someone else’s grid. We built Energypro here, for these rules. SunCentral 1 proves it works at scale.

“Energisation is the milestone everyone sees, and we were proud to mark it. But the real test of a wheeling deal comes every month-end, when the customer’s bill has to reflect exactly what was promised. Every unit of electricity must be accounted for, with every party working from the same number. That is what Energypro does,” says OAE CEO Gerjo Hoffman.

OAE explains that it does not own, trade or sell electricity, but acts as a neutral party between buyers and sellers, running the transactions that sit between a power plant, the grid and the customers it supplies.

“As an independent power producer that sells wheeling, we rely heavily on reliable software to serve our commercial and industrial customers as we continue to bring more of our utility-scale generation sites online,” says SolarAfrica COO Vincent Labuschagne.

“OAE has been excellent in providing day-to-day digital services and support. In addition, they worked alongside our teams to tailor Energypro to our business models and transaction flows, greatly helping us take the lead in providing wheeling to our customers,” he adds.

SunCentral 1 is the first of three 114 MW plants in the 342 MW first phase of SolarAfrica’s planned 1 GW SunCentral development. SunCentral 2 is in the later stages of construction and construction of SunCentral 3 is expected to begin shortly.