Centrica creates a cloud solution to help customers create and manage sustainable energy
Centrica knows the future of energy is local. Their new solution, Microgen, is making it possible for customers to sell microgenerated energy from their homes and businesses. Here’s the story.
Centrica is a multinational energy and services company based in Great Britain. Ofgem, the authority that regulates UK energy, requires Centrica (and other utility companies) to service microgenerators: customers who are generating sustainable electricity at a small scale.
Those customers can sell the electricity they generate to the National Grid, with the electricity supplier paying for the exchange. And, ultimately, there will be a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) electricity market, with microgenerators selling their surplus power to their neighbors and beyond. The capacity to manage these transactions is a crucial part of the future of energy.
In the past, Centrica used a custom-made program to manage these micro-producers. But as the support cycle for this legacy solution came to an end, Centrica decided to implement a new solution built on the SAP Business Technology Platform.
Their solution, Microgen, is the focus of our latest episode of Better Together: Customer Conversations. This story shows just how closely sustainability and digital transformation are interconnected.
A cloud-native solution
Centrica’s legacy solution relied on on-premise architecture. That meant a single point of failure for connectivity and made it hard to make the solution available from everywhere. The legacy solution was also limited in its ability to take payments and suffered from an unintuitive user interface.
By contrast, Microgen’s cloud-native architecture virtually eliminates downtime and makes it easy to offer access to the solution wherever there is internet access. The new system supports and integrates electronic payments, increasing efficiency and reducing friction for Centrica’s customers.
Centrica’s innovative solution shows how cloud-based, customizable solutions can be even more flexible and useful to a company than a bespoke solution. It also demonstrates how digital transformation is essential to address the changing energy landscape. Microgen is a platform built with flexibility and growth in mind, designed to address the C2C future of power.
Hear the Conversation
For this episode, we talked with
Serdar Simsekler, Head of SAP Technology (Strategy and Architecture) at Centrica, and
Helen Mallett, Head of Digital Enterprise Service Delivery, UK/I Home.
Join us for the thought leadership podcast and the practical, nuts-and-bolts LinkedIn conversation :
- For the podcast, I talked to Serdar and Helen about how the implementation has benefitted customers and employees both, what problems they were looking to solve with the solution, and what’s next for Centrica and the energy industry at large.
- In the LinkedIn session, we talked about the practical details of the project, from planning and implementation to ongoing development.
Check out more sustainable energy stories:
- Snam: How Can Easy Access to Real-Time Analytics Support the Development of New, Greener Energy Markets?
- Eneco: How Does a Cloud-Based Integration Suite Support Green Electricity and Innovative Energy Services?
Visit
sap.com/BTP to check out the podcast and the LinkedIn conversation. And remember, I’m always looking for feedback! Let me know topics you’d like to hear about and suggest questions we should be asking. You can also contact us if you’d like to be a guest on an episode.
Join us to hear customers share their candid stories with SAP Business Technology Platform.
