West created a web portal for Westland Energy that allows horticulturists to react quickly to developments in the energy sector and to control their energy consumption and costs.
| Market: | energy sector |
|---|---|
| Technology: | Java, JSP, XML, SOAP, Jakarta Tomcat, Sun Solaris, load balancing and redundancy |
| Brochure: |  |
Westland Energie supplies energy, more specifically to the greenhouse horticulture sector in the Westland region. Every year 1.5 billion m3 natural gas, 840 billion kWh electricity and 600 billion kWh of heat are sold. This energy is supplied to 42,000 households and 3,000 horticulture companies.
In 2004 the government liberated the energy market: energy suppliers had to start competing with each other. But it is hard to compete on quality in regard to energy. In anticipation of these developments Westland Energie decided it would compete by adding more value to its products: access via the internet for its customers to extra information and unique services. Westland Energie asked West to develop a web portal, where horticulturists could analyse their gas, energy and heat consumption, analyse statistical information, request oil prices and dollar exchange rates and demand tailor-made gas and electricity contacts by means of a personal access code. This allows the consumer to adjust his energy supply to his personal activities.
West guaranteed to develop this web portal and implement it within the agreed time and budget. Westland Energie launched this portal in 2002 and since then approximately 300 horticulturists make use of the webportal. Until today West has been adding new functionalities to this portal. West is also responsible for the hosting of the portal and West supplies follow-up support.
West implemented the personalisable web portal in accordance with the time boxing principle. This allowed to guarantee fixed run time with budget control.
Besides this eXtreme Programming (XP) was used. This is a software development method based on incremental changes, quality control and fast feedback to the customer. The programmers work in pairs which makes constant peer reviews possible. This has lead to the high quality of the portal.
The portal is constructed with state-of-the-art web technology: portal and application servers, SOAP and XML. Besides this West has tried to use standard components. In order to increase reliability the whole system is duplicated. The business logic, implemented in a Windows NT environment at Westland Energie, runs both in the computer centre in Poeldijk and in the backup facilities in Westerlee. The application servers are located in the computer centre of Westland Energie and in the hosting centre of West.
The used application server, running on Sun Solaris, is based on the open-source software product Jakarta Tomcat. The different functionalities are built as web applications which use Java servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP's). They collect data via SOAP (XML over HTTP) at Westland Energie.
In order to increase the scaling of the solution and relieve the back office, a SOAP-cache was built. By doing so multiple SOAP calls can be answered without having to contact the back office.
The web portal has lead to a strong relationship with the business customers of Westland Energie. A year after the start of the web portal approximately half of the contracts were finalised via the portal. Besides this the portal offers services with a unique added value. In times of growing market evolutions in the energy sector it is increasingly important to add value to a product .
Hoticulturists use heat buffers to store heat. Via the web portal the horticulturists can set their heat buffers so that they produce heat when energy is cheap. Horticulturists can store this heat and consequently use it when energy is expensive. The desired energy transport capacity can also be chosen per hour; and all this goes accompanied with relevant statistical information for the horticulturist.