TenneT powers the energy transition in Europe with scalability, reliability, and trust

How does a grid operator, operating at the scale of delivering energy to an entire country, maintain a service level as high as 99.99993%? That’s the fascinating story of TenneT, the Transmission System Operator (TSO) for the Netherlands and a part of Germany. It owns and operates over 25,000 kilometers of high-voltage lines and cables. It delivers electricity to 43 million domestic and business users, safely and reliably, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

TenneT’s mission is to ensure that power is available at the flip of a switch, whenever and wherever it is needed. But not only that—TenneT is at the heart of Europe’s transition to a decarbonized energy economy. It has taken on the crucial responsibility of integrating vast and variable resources of renewable energy into the grid and transporting it to end users. To drive this transition while maintaining a high level of grid reliability and safety is no easy task, and TenneT faced critical challenges.

Evolving business conditions create new challenges  

TenneT transports high-voltage energy between energy producers and energy consumers, including the local utilities who ultimately deliver low-voltage energy to end users like households and businesses. TenneT maintains contact with all of these various market parties to balance and monitor the grid—ensuring safe energy transmission and preventing power outages. However, TenneT’s commitment to decentralized renewable energy sources has added significant variability in daily energy production, making balancing the grid even more difficult. This has led to an exponential increase in the volume of messages that are exchanged and processed every day between TenneT, energy producers, and energy consumers.

To cater to this heightened demand, TenneT needed a new message-handling system that was better equipped to handle the increasing volume of messages. A more stable and scalable system would prevent communication breakdowns between TenneT and market parties, eliminating potential productivity and financial losses. Building a trusted communication channel also provided an opportunity to build deeper relationships with all market parties.

Rebuilding a foundation of trust

TenneT, working with Syntouch BV, selected TIBCO to build its new message-handling system to meet the demands of the renewable energy transition and to ensure business continuity.

Messages from market parties are sent to TIBCO BusinessConnect for processing, security checks, safety calculations and data transformations. TIBCO BusinessWorks then delivers these messages to different backend databases for further processing or archiving. Additionally, TIBCO EMS provides the backend communication between TIBCO BusinessConnect and BusinessWorks.

Syntouch, with its strong energy market expertise, implemented the TIBCO solution in stages, migrating some market-party communications to TIBCO first, establishing trust with smooth operations and eventually moving all market-party transactions to the TIBCO solution.

Stepping into an empowered future

TenneT solved its operational challenges with zero breakdowns or P1 incidents since TIBCO was implemented. TenneT is now empowered to focus on its future goals with the value derived from the TIBCO platform.

Trust & reliability: TenneT established trust in the system once again with its market counterparts, maintaining its strong brand reputation and opening up the aperture for business continuity and growth.

Increased capacity and scalability: TenneT can handle the increased volume of data exchanged with market parties to meet the dynamic needs of the renewable energy transition.

Compliance with laws and regulations: The increased capacity of handling messages also enables TenneT to comply with government and energy market regulations, avoiding potential financial penalties.

Cost Savings: TenneT can save up to five hundred thousand euros per year that would otherwise be spent mitigating P1 incidents.

Team productivity: With less manual intervention required, teams can proactively focus on creating business value rather than mitigating incidents.

TenneT is poised to make great strides in the European energy market and relies on TIBCO as an important partner in that journey.