KWh has been introduced as a new billing unit in the Hungarian gas industry, replacing MJ. This change concerns the data transfer and billing process between organizations specializing in the transportation, the distribution and trade of natural gas, while the retail sector will still have MJ on their bills. Many of Astron Informatics’ clients are affected, since their IT systems had to be prepared to process new data specified in the recently issued government regulation.
Since members of the European Union used several different billing units to measure gas consumption, the present changes need to be applied in order to bring them closer together and to facilitate gas trade amongst EU members in the future. In Hungary, the process will be realized through multiple steps: changes already happened in 2015, and are expected to continue next year. The present regulations affect organizations with gas distribution permits, who will introduce kWh as a new billing unit concerning all their business activities with gas trading companies.
All of Astron’s partners operating in the field of gas distribution and gas trade were affected by these present changes. It required serious IT development since the systems managing DSO (Distribution System Operator) data had to be prepared to deal with sending, receiving, loading, storing and converting the new type of data. Beyond the management of allocation related data, in some cases, the implementation process was also amongst Astron’s tasks.
’I am truly grateful to all my colleagues who participated in these projects. Their knowledge and professional attitude helped our clients meet the requirements of the new regulations. We hope that we will get the chance to work on equally challenging and interesting projects with them in the future as well.’ – said Zoltán Jacsó, head of the Energy Industry Applications division at Astron.